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This paper embraces broken world thinking and the ways that Steven Jackson (2014) sees that “the world is always breaking; it's in its nature to break. That breaking is generative and productive”. Accepting the brokenness of our systems is not a failure, but an opportunity to reimagine how we design these systems for a more agonistic and repairable future and as an antidote to solutionism and black boxing.

We explore how Jackson’s suggested role of The Fixer can be a beneficial new character with “special insight and knowledge” who might “know and see different things - indeed, different worlds - than the better-known figures of "designer" or "user"” in our entanglements with algorithmic decision systems and as a mediator for the frictions necessary to assume responsibility and response-ability in our socio-technical futures. Complimentary to the maintainer, the Fixer’s duty is to question and challenge broken systems, to suggest alternatives in the ethical interest of all stakeholders, and to facilitate a more respectful relationship between designer, user and algorithmic system. 

Taking inspiration from the successes of the Right to Repair movement, the community ethos of Repair Cafés and the author's own experiences with design, repair and use, the Fixer can be seen as the direct descendant of the hardware repair technician. A character who has been with us since the dawn of the artificial and can move with us into the more abstracted and entangled technological environment in which we find ourselves.