The few, the proud, the "maintainers"
by Tom Sullivan
After spending several post-college months riding trains around Europe, I took the train from New York to Washington, D.C. where I'd left my car with my sister. Compared to the silky ride of the Deutsche Bahn, this sucker was rocking, rumbling, and lurching all the way. Thought I was going to die.
The experience gave me a gut-level appreciation for well-maintained infrastructure and the unsung people who keep things working so smoothly one only notices when they don't. "Hail the maintainers," write Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell for Aeon. "Innovation," they believe, is overvalued:
At the turn of the millennium, in the world of business and technology, innovation had transformed into an erotic fetish. Armies of young tech wizards aspired to become disrupters. The ambition to disrupt in pursuit of innovation transcended politics, enlisting liberals and conservatives alike. Conservative politicians could gut government and cut taxes in the name of spurring entrepreneurship, while liberals could create new programmes aimed at fostering research. The idea was vague enough to do nearly anything in its name without feeling the slightest conflict, just as long as you repeated the mantra: INNOVATION!! ENTREPRENEURSHIP!!The hucksterism behind it leads almost inevitably to social displacement and economic inequality, "a feature, not a bug of highly innovative regions." What keeps the world turning often amounts to very old inventions used in novel ways and the infrastructure underlying those technologies. Fortune's David Z. Morris commented on the Aeon essay, noting:
Vinsel and Russel argue that, particularly in the last twenty years, talk about innovation has become increasingly counterproductive. One key example is America’s ongoing infrastructure crisis, which they say can be blamed partly on a culture that celebrates investment in innovation over upkeep. Only a wave of train crashes, subway meltdowns, and poisoned water reminiscent of the developing world has pushed infrastructure maintenance back into public debate in the U.S.Much of the dissatisfaction in evidence this election year is a result of innovations such as securitization, trade agreements, and disruptive technologies. We value technology. We value the economy. But we've delivered mankind into servitude to them. Plus, we are so enamored of the shiny and new, we've let the everyday crumble beneath our shoes. Vinsel and Russell write:
We can think of labour that goes into maintenance and repair as the work of the maintainers, those individuals whose work keeps ordinary existence going rather than introducing novel things. Brief reflection demonstrates that the vast majority of human labour, from laundry and trash removal to janitorial work and food preparation, is of this type: upkeep. This realisation has significant implications for gender relations in and around technology. Feminist theorists have long argued that obsessions with technological novelty obscures all of the labour, including housework, that women, disproportionately, do to keep life on track.Writing for the Guardian, David Ferguson appreciates the work done by the maintainers:
I have endless respect for people behind the scenes keeping the world together. I remember the pride I once took in being a restaurant dishwasher. Yes, the job is, in some ways, at the bottom of the food chain. It’s typically the lowest-paid position in any restaurant, and yet there is a simple, satisfying power to it. To customers, you’re invisible, but you’re ultimately the person who is keeping them safe from germs and cross-contamination, an invisible lifeguard at life’s watering hole.I have such a job. I help design and maintain the factories that make the products you use without considering where they come from or the thought and labor that went into them.
Each morning, you show up, put on an apron and then tackle the day’s mound of dirty dishes. It’s sweaty, sometimes backbreaking, work, but the core mission is always the same: make it all sparkle and put it back where it belongs. Keep everything moving. Everybody’s got to eat and if they’re going to eat, they’re going to need some dishes.