Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One
press.stripe.comI'm interested in the topic, and the book cover looks great, so I'll probably read it.
But it seems a bit "Maintenance: For Boys". The items mentioned on this page are "the maintenance of sailboats, vehicles, and weapons", and "Soviet tanks, or tricked-out Model Ts".
No mention that for millenia we were mending our clothes, cleaning our houses, maintaining our food systems.
The reason this book sounds interesting is that maintenance is systematically undervalued, and basically in our human history pushed onto women and the lowest social classes. But the marketing material seems to highlight only the "sexy" stuff like weapons and vehicles. Where's the maintenance of washing our hands, washing our clothes, cleaning our streets?
There's this artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who was the "Artist in Residence" at NYC's department of sanitation in the 70s, and tried to use conceptual art as a way to highlight the work of the department and make "maintenance art" a thing. I'm interested in that kind of re-valuing of maintenance.
I bet this book will be interesting, I just don't like the framing as "Maintenance: Of Everything" since it's clearly not the whole story. Hopefully part 2 has a broader scope and mindset.
I don't disagree with your desire to see house/clothes/etc. maintenance covered, but this is such a perplexing comment.
As far as I understand, you take the book's title to be being false advertising, and seem to be upset that it leaves out some subjects.
How does one get upset that an author didn't include handwashing instructions in a book?
You could have made your (very true) point about the devaluation of some maintenance work as a general observation, without shaming the author for omitting some subjects of your choosing. What does it achieve to go into a culture war based on the description of a book you haven't read?
The book is basically one chapter according to the table of contents: Vehicles. On some bookshop, it's even shelved under the automotive category.
What review did you write to Hawking's Theory of everything?
I don't think you're being fair. You're turning "I don't like the framing" into "a culture war".
There should be a volume about maintenance of our bodies and minds (without depending on technologies that consume a lot of energy and resources).
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
“In his journal [Crowhurst] would diligently make a list of projects that needed to be done, do a few of them half-heartedly, and then lose interest. Since he never got around to organizing his stowage, he had to ransack everywhere to find things.”
This hits close to home… I don’t think I should be a sailor.
I want to inform readers that the article is about three people. There's no transition when they start talking about the second one, and I didn't remember the names, so I didn't figure it out till the end of the article and missed all the contrasts.
Yes, this article was one of the best articles in the last few years. And to this day I think about it. It has that property of good writing that lingers with you way after you read it.
Can't wait to read the book!
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.
> 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.
What do you mean by this? I have no idea who Stewart Brand is, and I am wary of authors who advertise themselves by saying how many books they have written, because it makes me think they are fiction writers rather than people with real knowledge on the subject.
He's not in this to sell books. Stewart is investigating a way of life, and a means of keeping things working a long time. And he's documenting it thoroughly.
> people with real knowledge on the subject
...tend to be qualified to write a lot of books on the subject.
The cover art is such a master stroke. See Kintsugi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
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Edit: Sorry, my mind was preoccupied with buying the book instead of elaborating.
The interactive 3d render of the book and the gold gleam of the Kintusgi sent me absolutely gushing.
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.
Thanks for the link. I used to listen to every podcast from Sean Carroll but have fallen off recently, I'm excited to jump back in with this one.
As robots are creating products, they are using all the space possible making human to interact difficult (think about opening a screw). Previously, those products created by human hands, making it possible to interact by other human hands (as maintainer).
Now, I think same about making programs by AI. They do sometimes in such a way that makes future maintenance harder.
The problem comes when price is not cheap.
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.
Or Democracy
Since when is Stripe a book publisher?
This was discussed in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17551687
To hear Patrick Collison tell it, "we see that one of the main limits on Stripe's growth is the number of successful startups in the world. If we can cheaply help increase that number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so."
This is the founder's bookshelf: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf
I guess 2018. I learned about them relatively recently and IMHO they're doing a pretty darn good job.
The books are also physically really pleasant to hold and look at.
I’ve read each book they’ve published and enjoyed them all.
The J.C.R. Licklider book was difficult for me just because the font is small. I ended up finding an epub version and read that instead and loved it. The physical book is beautiful though and I'm glad I have it.
If anyone has already read this book, can you share your thoughts on how does it compare to software engineering, do you see parallels, are they applicable and so on
That's really wonderful! That's exactly what we're doing at https://infinite-battery.com with a made-to-be-easily-repairable e-bike battery :)
Can you do the same with mid-drives too?
One of the reasons I drive a 30-year-old Range Rover is that I have a complete copy of all the service documentation for it, in an easily-downloadable 500MB zip file which also includes manuals for a bunch of other models. I need roughly the same number of specialised tools to maintain and repair it as I do to repair and maintain my (perfectly ordinary non-electric) bike, although all the individual components are far heavier and considerably more likely to get oil all down my trousers.
Permaculture starts with things you can repair.