243. Maintenance

Maintenance is often ignored, minimized, or portrayed as being inferior to creative/productive work, but it's really the most fundamental activity of life itself, & it can teach us a lot about the world.

- Links for the Curious -

“American Time Use Survey - 2022 Results,” n.d.

Denis, Jérôme, and David Pontille. “Beyond Breakdown: Exploring Regimes of Maintenance,” n.d.

Mohun, Simon. “Productive and Unproductive Labour in the Labour Theory of Value,” n.d.

What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
-Bertrand Russell

[TheoriesofEverything]

This channel's a fine wine glass, maintained by you. Thank you, man.

[Infantry]

I think about this all the time, at least from a learning perspective. There really isn't a limit on how deep you can get into any craft, tool, or anything.

I think my interest started out of fear and paranoia tho. My dad is a bit of a survivalist gun nut, and I think that imparted onto me. That framing makes learning less "oh cool, this is how this works" or "my respect for [discipline] has deepened" and more "This might be useful to know when the world ends". I still get the former, but it's colored by the latter, and it's hard not to let that thinking worm its way into everything.
That said, it *has* been useful to have this growth/curiosity forward approach to things. I have a career in software validation, and the arts. Both of these things benefit from having a broad understanding of a variety of things, how they work, what the rules are (and what it looks like to break them), etc.

[String.Epsilon]

I encourage everyone reading the comments here to check out what their local municipality offers in terms of peeks behind the curtain. I think tours for water treatment plants are pretty common. Just getting a better insight as to what is involved in keeping just your neighborhood functional is pretty cool.

[bangboom]

Love that perspective on Y2K. Had always heard the nothingburger argument and never considered the mass maintenance which would've gone into preventing it.

[Autists-Guide]

In class, I make the point that the best IT department is invisible... things don't go wrong (because of maintenance) or get fixed without panic when they do (incident management).
Being overlooked is therefore a compliment.

[DevFRus]

A nice follow up would be Mary Midgley's "Philosophical Plumbing" -- philosophy as a maintenance activity for the system of concepts that underly our society.

[MarkyMarkJ]

As an FE for a power utility company; this video does an awesome job articulating just how pivotal the operational maintenance of infrastructure truly is. Quite literally, equipment and devices break down all the time all over the system. I've personally spent many on-call rotations working 24+ hours addressing emergent troubleshooting issues. But as you point how the robustness and redundancy means that most customers never really endure a loss of power regularly. This leads to people being convinced we must be doing nothing year-round until a major storm shows up.

[bangboom]

Coming back to this video because a parallel occurred to me. Around 3:30 you point out how good technology extends the user's will and becomes invisible, and that maintenance ensures this illusion. This is also the same as one's actual body parts in regards pain - you're not aware of your kidneys unless your kidneys are going wrong. Good little example of the extended mind thesis. Almost makes me frame maintenance as the general act of extricating unimportant components from awareness.

[jakobquick]

Very good Last chapter of this episode on the illusion of pruducts

[bthomson]

As always "riveted!!!" Will listen again as soon as I finish the comment. So important a topic! So often overlooked a subject! Texas' electric grid! Maui's siren system! I was one of the few effected by Y2K ( my Mas90 payroll software failed and I had to replace it!) Unions are making somewhat of a come back and I hope that helps!

[matthewbrunell]

Heidigger made similar phenological arguments. Nolan Gertz noted so much of modern tech is so unreliable that we are almost always in a discombobulated state.

(The touch screen was uncooperative while typing this.)

[Xob_Driesestig]

1:44 This video is sponsored by Roomba
2:30 It's also there to ensure an untrained idiot (or deliberate saboteur) doesn't mess up the whole building. Reasonable compromise: glass doors.
4:30 I think the writers strike will be less successful than they're hoping for, given that streaming as a whole is losing massive amounts of money. I fear that taking more money from investors won't be enough and it's really the consumers that are getting the best deal out of the current status-quo, which means they (we) would have to pay more to make the writers' pay more fair. Of course we live in the age of easy internet piracy so increasing prices could just as easily drive costumers away.
7:45 Wow, very cool story. Thanks for sharing.
12:30 We can think of the news/media as the 'maintenance' of our education system. Every time a new discovery is made, every time the world map or the political landscape changes we get a 'software update'. Sadly the media has failed so badly at 'education maintenance' that even conceiving of it in that way feels ridiculous.

[ctopus]

This reminds me of Mierle Laderman Ukeles art project to shake the hands of every sanitation worker in NYC, 1979-1980

[UberhaxxrXYZ]

I'm new to this channel, watching from 240 to 1 xD (backwards)

[anakimluke]

Has how has Newton's maintenance been?? :3 He had a surgery a while ago, did he not?

[rhythmandacoustics]

What essential maintenance people overlook? Well look no further. Their mental, physical, and financial health.

[threethrushes]

Teeth, nails, hair, body, motorcycles, missus, friendships, accounts, watches, home.

[landspide]

Governments, need maintenance by voters.

[CamilaEspia]

People with less resources have to maintain machinery for their livelihood at the expense of the maintenance of their own bodies. People with greater resources spend whole systems of machinery to keep the maintenance of their own bodies. It's not ideal lol