Will it be a Do-it-Yourself World?

Today if you want to do your plumbling or put up a shower door, where do you go? In earlier times you went to the yellow pages and called a tradesman. Today you go to Youtube or Home Depot, get the knowhow and attempt it with a fair degree of confidence. If you need technical help in an enginerring or a High School subject , you go to Khan Academy and get upto speed while Salman Khan ( The man behind Khan Academy) doodles you out of your confusion. I had mentally accepted this style of education and jested with my friends that I was Youtube educated but i was not prepared for what I saw in a Staples store today ( pic above)

If DIY books exist on seperation and Divorce , it truly reflects how volatile our relationships are becoming. This ties in well with what i had been reading about communities who inhabit the Canadian Northern provinces. As the ice cap recedes due to Global warming, the Innuit men stay back at home as they wait for the ice to thicken on the waterways before they venture out to hunt. As they stay home longer, frustration seems to rise and it gets directed at the family. Obviously relationships get strained. Did you ever have an inkling that Global Warming could have this kinda side effect? We all have heard that rise in sea levels could make islands like Maldives disappear, but this was a new one.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like in the future. Could it get even more modular? Say for example, your car stalls. The message on the dash says " Fuel pump faulty" . You go to the auto store , pick up the right part and the installation direction walks you through the install process. I think the Swedish furniture chain, Ikea started this with their DIY furniture. Suddenly there was an explosion in the consumer market place as goods started being sold in a semi ready state. Not only that ...If you need to file your taxes, a software wizard speeds you through the process. Furniture, electricals, house repair, gardening ... are all DIY now a days & I suspect it will get even more of a DIY world as the world tightens its belt as a result of the last recession. Then where does this leave all our specialist. Will they disappear? I suspect we will still need them but only for the really heavy stuff... surgery ( I doubt you can do a heart by-pass as a DIY) , car engine repair, complex litigation and so on.

For those of you who would like to get initiated to this new world , i suggest you go get yourself a tool kit today but try and stay away from the books in the pic above.

PS:Talking of a DIY world ... some of you may recollect years back , taking apart our mobikes and then while attempting to put it back, we seemed to have an unreasonable number of spare parts left over. The mechanic who was called to "fix it" went to work with a smug grin on his face-- a grin we would have loved to wipe off his face with a shiner to his nose.