Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One

Stewart Brands article The Maintenance Race[0] was one of my favorite posts in 2022.

[0]: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-maintenance-race/

EDIT: discussion at that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32196345

I was fortunate to read a preprint of Brand's latest. It's magnificent.

How and why do things fail? What are the cultures that lead to long-lasting products?

The undercurrent here is that Brand is behind the 10,000 year clock and has a vested interest in making things last a long time.

This book is an exploration of the world of things, how they break, and how people fix them. It's a huge effort, and Part One is right. He's been posting further work on Twitter from Part Two.

He included some sword fighting manuals that I sent that we think are the earliest written instruction guide.

Sean Carroll interviews Stewart about this book on his latest podcast episode:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/19/341-...

I really enjoyed it. I'll probably get a copy of this. I loved the thermodynamics analogy in the start of the podcast, likening maintenance to the prevention of entropy, with all the energetic exchanges that entails. Though maintenance does take work, it's worth it. Stewart makes a compelling case for it.

This is a topic I’ve been wanting a book on for a long time. We’ve done so much work to eliminate the need for maintenance for the masses through things like planned obsolescence, renting instead of owning, and appeasing the hedonic treadmill. I can’t help but feel through this we’ve lost a lot of collective skills in patience and ownership as a result.

I’m looking forward to reading this.

Gotta maintain The Machines of Loving Grace.

Since when is Stripe a book publisher?