does anyone use tools anymore?

Cell phones aren't designed to hold up to abuse.  Almost everyone I know gets a new phone every couple of months, in part, because of planned obsolescence, engineered fragility, and the endless thirst for more whistles and bells.  Phones are now boredom killing, communication pocket pals that makes Spock's tricorder look primitive by comparison. 

Well, my cheap, thirty dollar, pay-as-you-go, minimalistic burner hit the concrete once too often, resulting in a handful of parts that didn't light up any more.  It's not the loss of the phone that bothered me but losing all those contacts is a real bitch, especially when you don't have a backup.  I figured the phone I found after a party might be useful so I switched chips only to find my chip was incompatible with with this phone.  After a few inquiries I learned the sim card and chipset are married and the service I had wouldn't retrieve my contacts. 
Well, that sucks!

I don't give up that easily and decided to try and fix it just enough to retrieve my contacts.  Considering these things are mass produced by machines in automated Chinese factories with an expected lifespan of a Bic lighter and a price tag equivalent to the minutes it comes with, it stands to reason a cell phone repair business is a less than adequate career choice.  I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained and got my jewelers glass and the smallest tools I could find to perform micro-surgery on a throw away phone most people wouldn't bother with at 20 times the price.

Maybe that's what's wrong with society today.  We all know we spend tons of money on crap that will eventually break but we buy it anyway and immediately replace it when it breaks and never consider repair as an option because we don't have the time, knowledge, abilities, intelligence, or patience to do much more than buy some other limited lifespan gizmo with even more colored lights and cool sounds.

I understand the whole thing about how making crap that breaks is good for the economy but do we have to lose critical thinking and the ability to use simple hand tools as a trade off?  Can't someone build an automated phone factory some place besides China?  It doesn't have to be a big factory and you won't need people to make the phones.  What's a cell phone cost?  A couple hundred bucks?  Parts cost pennies and machines work day and night.  You'd think someone out there might give this idea a go if not for any other reason but bragging rights as the only place that makes phones in the U.S.A.  What ever happened to that pioneering spirit?  I can't believe we have a nation of 300 million people fixated on buying cell phones from an automated factory on the other side of the world without questioning why it's ok for China to have the monopoly on cell phone manufacture, as well as everything else.  Seems a lot of people piss and moan about it and that's about it.

Anyway, using a micro phillips, tweezers, and a jewelers glass I tore two phones down to their smallest parts and cobbled together one working cell with my contacts still intact.  Of course, the phone I used for parts is now totally scrap but I only kept it around just in case the remote possibility of this type of situation might occur.  Besides, the jerk who left it here deserved an asshole tax, at the very least.

Don't ya love it when things go positive full circle?

Thanks, Dave.