The case for fixing everything

The case for fixing everything A new book by Stewart Brand, an architect of modern tech culture, asks: How do we prioritize maintenance? And why? But it doesn’t quite have the answers. The handsome new book Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One, by the tech industry legend Stewart Brand, promises to be the first in a series offering “a comprehensive overview of the civilizational importance of maintenance.” One of Brand’s several biographers described him as a mainstay of both counterculture and cyberculture, and with Maintenance, Brand wants us to understand that the upkeep and repair of tools and systems has profound impact on daily life. As he puts it, “Taking responsibility for maintaining something—whether a motorcycle, a monument, or our planet—can be a radical act.” Radical how? This volume doesn’t say. In an outline for the overall work, Brand says his…