The case for fixing everything

Stewart Brand, a prominent figure in both counterculture and cyberculture, has released a new book titled *Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One*, which aims to underscore the critical role of maintenance in civilization. The book is intended as the first in a series providing a comprehensive overview of the importance of upkeep and repair across various domains. Brand argues that taking responsibility for maintaining objects or systems—ranging from motorcycles to monuments to the planet—can be a radical act, highlighting the often-overlooked value of maintenance work. Brand’s focus on maintenance aligns with a growing academic interest since the mid-2010s in the study of repair, care, and the labor involved in sustaining the world’s infrastructure and technologies. Despite its essential nature, maintenance has historically been undervalued compared to innovation, often receiving less recognition and status. This neglect is evident in many organizational and societal contexts, such as the deteriorating state of American infrastructure. The right-to-repair movement, which challenges corporate practices that limit consumers’ ability to fix their own products, further illustrates the tensions surrounding maintenance in modern economies. While Brand’s earlier work helped inspire these insights, *Maintenance: Of Everything* takes a more personal and reflective tone. At 87 years old, Brand appears to view maintenance as a solitary, meaningful pursuit tied to individual fulfillment rather than collective progress. The book reflects a lifetime of engagement with tools and repair, though it rarely addresses the broader systems requiring care. Instead, it contemplates the inevitability of decay and the human effort to sustain life and objects against time’s erosion, offering a poignant meditation on aging and responsibility. Brand’s new work situates maintenance within the arc of his diverse career, which began with his involvement in the 1960s countercultural Merry Pranksters and has spanned decades of technological and cultural innovation. *Maintenance: Of Everything* invites readers to reconsider the honor and respect owed to those who keep the world functioning, challenging prevailing attitudes that often overlook the essential labor of maintainers.