Cases that solve all problems

Brand is also right, defenders don’t get the credit they deserve. Over the past few decades, academics have shown that all of this work, from refueling tools to replacing worn parts to updating code bases, often has a lower status than “innovation.” Maintenance is neglected in many organizational and social settings. (Just look at some of America’s infrastructure!) As the right-to-repair movement demonstrates, in pursuit of greater profits, companies often prevent us from repairing them, or drastically shorten the serviceable lifespan of their products. It’s hard to think of any other reason to put your computer on your refrigerator door.

Some of Brand’s early work helped inspire these insights. But his new book makes me think he doesn’t see things that way. For Brand, maintenance seems to be a solitary act, profound, but more about personal success and fulfillment than tending to a shared world or making it better.

Brand was born in 1938 and is now 87 years old. The book is imbued with a feeling – its struggle with corrosion, rust and decay, its attempt to keep things moving forward even as they inevitably falter – of one looking at life and contemplating its ending. Maintenance: everything throughout every stage of brand life. It’s worth reviewing where it fits into this arc. Brand has always been interested in tools and fixing things, but he paid scant attention to the systems that needed the most maintenance.

More than half a century ago, Brand was a member of the Merry Pranksters, a counterculture, psychedelic-centered hippie group led by Ken Kesey, author of “The Merry Pranksters.” One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In 1966, Brand co-produced Trips Festival, where bands such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company performed to thousands of people in a psychedelic light show.

Branded global directory There is a vision that may feel progressive, but its libertarian, rugged individualist philosophy of reinventing civilization itself stands in stark contrast to a more collective movement for social change.

In some ways, the Travel Festival set the model for the rest of his life’s work. Brand’s biographers describe him as an online celebrity who succeeded by bringing people together, building a coalition of influential figures that enhanced his influence. As Casey said in 1980, “Stewart recognized power. And he held on to it.”

Brand applied this network logic to a career for which he will forever be remembered: global directory. First published in 1968, the publication was aimed at hippies and members of the nascent back-to-the-land movement, and its motto was “Get the Tools.” Its pages are filled with quonset huts, geodesic domes, solar panels, well pumps, water filters and other technology for off-grid living. This vision might feel progressive or left-leaning, but its libertarian, rugged individualist philosophy—avoiding corrupt institutions and reinventing civilization—stands in sharp contrast to the collective movements of the time that were pushing for profound social change—such as civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism.

This vision also brings directly to Silicon Valley the empowerment that new digital tools bring. In 1985, Brand published Global Software Catalogis the final installment in the series, and he also co-founded WELL – Whole Earth’s Lectronic Link, a groundbreaking online community known for facilitating the trade in Grateful Dead pirates, among other things. He also wrote a biographical book about the MIT Media Laboratory, known for its corporate-sponsored research into new communications technologies. “Labs will cure the ills of technology not through economics or politics, but through technology,” Brand writes. Again, not collective action, not policymaking: tools. Brand then co-founded the Global Business Network, a group of expensive consulting futurists that further connected him to MIT, Stanford and Silicon Valley. Brands have really helped bring about the modern digital revolution.