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Reading "The Innovation Delusion" by @RussellProf and @STS_News. The answer to the highlighted question? I come from a family of real-life maintainers: carpenters, electricians, telephone mechanics and more. 'Forgotten' is a matter of perspective: 'by whom?'. 1/
In case you have no interest whatsoever in following this thread all the way down to where it might end, I can already say this: Great book. Read it. 2/
Innovation-speak is the ideology of malleability without accountability? 3/
Neatly aligned with Kuhnian views of science that recast the meaning of "progress" in science at the same time. 4/
I'll just leave this here. 5/
In many practical cases, to maintain and to care for are synonyms. While in English, "to care for one's house" might point to an emotional relationship of sorts, the Dutch equivalent would simply mean that you fix what's broken and ensure nothing else breaks. 6/
Russel and Vinsel focus almost exclusively on maintenance of the material world: machines, tools, devices, infrastructure and more. Crumbling infrastructure is a bane to this world. Yet so are crumbling institutions, 7/
such as democracy, which would benefit more from proactive maintenance than any form of disruptive innovation. The current crisis in US democracy calls for repair and maintenance, not "move fast and break things". We've already seen that. Didn't go so well. 8/
If you want people to care about values and how their operationalisation and materialisation shape the world as we know it, this is how you do it. Cheers! 9/
This too, is about value. Perhaps partially idiosyncratic to US society as well, but it also seems to be about what one maintains. Consider a data protection officer, engaged with maintaining the security and privacy of data subjects, and who is (momentarily) paid well. 10/
Living as an academic in a maintainer bubble, I can testify that absorbing skills from that bubble, how to lay brick, how to fix a broken appliance, how to repair furniture, how to care for woodwork and plumbing, etc., is a neverending endeavour. 11/
Some pandemic foresight is hidden in there too: "When natural and man-made disasters strike or other mishaps undo our worlds, we crave “a return to normalcy,” the reemergence of the everyday routines we struggle to sustain". 12/
Russel and Vinsel continue to apply the maintenance frame to our own bodies: bathing, eating, caring. A lot of public health advice is about maintenance, a lot of dietary guidelines and exercise guidelines are not about excellence and performance - they are about stability, 13/
about the ability to keep a stable weight, not lose it. To move 30 minutes a day, or to cycle to work. Not to become an athlete, just to sustain 'fitness' in some way. Sure, there are excesses on the individual and institutional level. But are they the norm? 14/
Russel and Vinsel's argument is quite convincing and the examples they use to support it equally so - but they are very American. That doesn't mean that I do not recognise the issues they point out; I do, but in a less pronounced way. Perhaps this has something to do with it? 15/
Russel and Vinsel present a social argumentation. They do not ontologically separate innovation from maintenance but identify different social groups and dynamics that enact a separation. Which means that the boundaries are fuzzy, local and situated - but the dynamic isn't. 16/
It also enables them to claim that it can be otherwise, and present examples of contrarian enactments. Moving into that part now. 17/
I get the sentiment, but the language of innovation vs maintenance = fear vs love might be taking it a bit too far? 18/
As they progress to speak about, for instance, the role of innovation and innovation speak in maintenance, blanket statements like these ("The maintenance mindset is, in many ways, the antidote to the Innovation Delusion") feel unnecessarily oversimplified. 19/
If the Innovation Delusion is a social reality we have to face, aren't maintenance cultures themselves subject to it too? Is there a maintenance-speak equally overselling potential and draws from a repertoire of fear too (not fear of being left behind, but fear of collapse?) 20/
However, I have to ask myself: Is one fear more legitimate than the other? Probably. Especially when it comes to those who fight to keep collapse forever in the future, how we think about them and how we support them, there is a world to gain. 21/
Step *1*. 22/
Ultimately, though, when Vinsel and Russel talk solutions in the final chapter, they focus on individuals: to let go of unrealistic ambitions of innovation & maintenance; to downsize lives, to stretch only as far as your jacket allows (Dutch proverb) 23/
Not hyperindividualistic, but also not really structural. Despite having demonstrated the structural character of the problem... 24/
I spoke too soon (premature tweeting, it happens to the best of us). As the chapter continues, it moves into the political and legal context to allow and support (and maintain) maintenance. But again, mostly allowing people to choose maintenance over alternatives, instead of 25/
politically positioning maintenance as taking priority over indulgent novelties, laws that enforce maintenance of public infrastructures, and more. 26/
The book end on a humble note, with an invitation rather than an explanation. Humility is good, but too much of it weakens the contribution this book offers. 27/
The book is powerful and persuasive in its style and the argument is clear. The presented innovation delusion and the maintenance mindset are, however, not always clearly distinguishable. Such dichotomies are always problematic, even though they do help building the argument. 28/
The book argues that there is a structural problem with our infrastructures - both public and private - yet argues for individual and communal solutions primarily (not exclusively). Sure, we should all contribute to maintaining the things (tangible and less so) around us, 29/
our things and those of others. But our societies should also maintain themselves, structurally. A maintenance mindset needs to, in some way or another, inspire a maintained society, that it itself maintains the maintenance mindset through its institutions. 30/
But I'm guessing that will be @STS_News and @RussellProf 's next book: "Maintained maintenance". 31/
I can only repeat tweet #2 from this thread: read this. You will not waste a minute of your time doing so. Now, if I were an adult academic, I would have written all this in a book review. 32/
Do you publish series of tweets, @eSTSjournal, with Frozen songs in them? 33/
Nunc est tempus clauditis. 34/34
