Maintenance

Maintenance. It’s not sexy. Not like the buzzwords Creation and Innovation. The new is novel. The old is… just old.

 

Maintenance is one chapter’s title in a book I’m reading: David Edgerton’s The Shock of the Old. It’s a very important chapter supporting Edgerton’s thesis, that much of the technologies we actually use much of the time are old, even though we would like to ascribe the twists and turns of technological history on the new and the novel, the innovative and the creative. Yes, your fancy new device feels new, seems new, and has been touted as new, but much of its functionality relies on the old. The new gets the headlines. The old workhorse is still chugging away doing its work. As long as you keep it maintained. Edgerton’s book is chock full of examples cutting across swaths of history and economics.

 

Maintenance is a word I’ve been thinking about as I teach through a semester of Covid-19 restrictions. Yes, I’m resorting to supposedly new technologies (Zoom!) and supposed “best practices” of online engagement. But beneath the veneer, I think the most effective things I’m doing in my teaching are still the old strategies I’ve accumulated over the years. Mediated by new technologies perhaps, but old-style engagement is still its core. Someone from the Cult of the New might be unimpressed, perhaps even Shocked by the Old that they see in my teaching. But I suspect if you asked my actual students if I’m substantially helping their learning, I think most (though perhaps not all) will say yes.

 

Maintenance is key to life processes in the cell, the smallest unit of life. The more I study the origin of life and think about chemical and biological evolution, the more I’m impressed by how much goes into cell maintenance. Most of life’s energy budget goes to maintenance and rightly so, as it fights the inexorable push of thermodynamics to the equilibrium state. The using and reusing of older “systems” is rampant. While there is some assembly required, by and large what we deem to be great organismal transitions come from repurposing the old. There are some new things under the sun. But for the most part, they’re not that new.

 

Maintenance is something I worry about as I get older. I think about how much rest I’m getting, how much exercise, how much food I eat and whether it is of optimal diversity, quality and quantity. Injuries take longer to heal; I have to be more careful to maintain my body in working order. Can I maintain what I’m doing? Or will something have to give?

 

Maintenance seems invisible. Until it is taken away. You notice when it’s gone as the dead and dilapidated begin to accumulate, be it biological or physical. So look around; notice the old and how it’s maintained. If you don’t it might be too late. It is easy to be distracted and allured by the faddishly new.