The argument for making improvements across the board
Brand is correct in noting that maintainers often don’t receive the recognition they deserve. Over the past few decades, research has illustrated that tasks like oiling tools, replacing worn parts, and updating code tend to be seen as less prestigious than “innovation.” This neglect of maintenance is evident in many organizational and societal contexts, such as American infrastructure. The right-to-repair movement has highlighted how profit-driven companies frequently limit our ability to repair devices or have reduced the longevity of their products. One has to wonder why certain technologies, like computers in refrigerators, have emerged.
Some of Brand’s earlier contributions inspired these ideas, yet his new book suggests a different perspective. For Brand, maintenance appears to be a solitary endeavor, significant yet more focused on personal achievement rather than enhancing a shared world.
Born in 1938, Brand is now 87 years old. The book, which addresses issues of corrosion, rust, and decay, conveys a reflection on life and its inevitable conclusions. Maintenance: Of Everything resonates throughout Brand’s various life phases, and it’s worthwhile to consider where it fits in that trajectory. While Brand has always been passionate about tools and repairing, he has seldom concentrated on the systems that require the most attention.
More than fifty years ago, Brand was part of the Merry Pranksters, a countercultural, LSD-influenced hippie collective led by Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In 1966, he co-produced the Trips Festival, where bands like the Grateful Dead performed amidst psychedelic light displays.
Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog presented a vision that seemed forward-thinking, yet its rugged-individualist philosophy of transforming civilization independently stood apart from more collaborative social change movements. The Trips Festival established a model for much of Brand’s subsequent work. His biographers describe him as a network celebrity—someone who advanced by uniting individuals and forming coalitions of influential figures to amplify his message. As Kesey remarked in 1980, “Stewart recognizes power. And cleaves to it.”
Brand applied this networking approach to his most notable endeavor: the Whole Earth Catalog. First published in 1968 and targeted at hippies and the early back-to-the-land movement, the publication embodied the motto “Access to tools.” Its pages featured Quonset huts, geodesic domes, solar panels, water pumps, and other off-grid technologies. While the vision might appear progressive, the individualistic philosophy of avoiding corrupt systems clashed with more communal movements advocating for significant social change, such as civil rights and environmentalism.
This vision also paved the way for the empowerment associated with new digital tools and the rise of Silicon Valley. In 1985, Brand published the Whole Earth Software Catalog, the final installment in the series, and co-founded the WELL—the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link—a pioneering online community known for trading Grateful Dead bootlegs. He also authored a book about the MIT Media Lab, recognized for its corporate-sponsored research into new communication technologies. Brand emphasized that “The Lab would cure the pathologies of technology not with economics or politics but with technology.” Again, this reflects a focus on tools rather than collective action or policymaking. Additionally, he co-founded the Global Business Network, a consulting group that further linked him to MIT, Stanford, and the tech industry. Ultimately, Brand significantly contributed to the modern digital revolution.
