There’s a lot to like about Steward Brand. His Whole Earth Catalog was quirky unpretentious fun. His How Buildings Learn, has a wonderful chapter on the ramshackle, unnamed, disrespected building on the MIT campus where quirky innovators were given space to create. His essay on Xerox Parc explained how the technology being developed there could liberate individual creativity. When Steve Jobs at Stanford delivered what is widely believed to be the best commencement address in history, he ended by quoting Stewart Brand’s final message in the 1974 Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
In the review quoted below, highlights that the simplification of production enabled by standardization of parts promoted the democratization of technology maintenance (and we might add, helped to democratize innovation too). Major simplification goes against the Theory of the Adjacent Possible which claims that technology develops toward greater and greater complexity.
(p. C7) Read front to back, “Maintenance” tells a coherent story of civilizational progress. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most machines were one-off creations, built by artisans to their own quirky specifications. But the technological age increasingly demanded standardization. Weapons led the way. If a cannonball jammed in an imprecisely bored barrel, the cannon might explode, killing its crew. On the other hand, if the parts of a flintlock rifle were interchangeable, a soldier could repair his weapon without the need for a gunsmith.
The manufacturing techniques that enabled this kind of precision gradually spread to other technologies. The same tools developed to bore cannon barrels were then used to improve steam engines. But standardization had its enemies, Mr. Brand notes, especially among gunsmiths and other artisans. During the French Revolution, the sansculottes rebelled against the new industrial techniques. “Craft was extolled; uniformity was deplored,” Mr. Brand writes. France’s technical progress was set back 50 years.
A century later, the early automobile industry faced a similar split. The original Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Mr. Brand writes, “was manufactured as a bespoke, unique vehicle, meticulously crafted by a dedicated team.” Henry Ford’s Model T, by contrast, was a crude but ingeniously simple machine. Ford made sure each part was manufactured to unvarying specifications, “perfect enough” that it could be installed by a moderately skilled worker on a moving assembly line. No fine-tuning needed.
Ford’s embrace of standardization allowed his Model T to be built quickly and inexpensively. But standardization had another, paradoxical effect: It allowed nonexperts to repair their own vehicles and other equipment. A farmer who owned a Model T didn’t need a forge or metal lathe to fix his engine; he could simply order a replacement part—or cannibalize one from a wrecked car in a junkyard.
The French revolutionaries feared industrialization would depersonalize society by marginalizing skilled artisans. Mr. Brand shows that, instead, standardization democratized access to technology. With a few tools and a little gumption, anyone could learn to maintain and repair the machinery of daily life.
For the full review see:
James B. Meigs. “Fixing the Future.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 6, 2025): C7.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 5, 2025, and has the title “‘Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One’: Making the Future.”)
The book under review is:
Brand, Stewart. Maintenance of Everything: Part One. South San Francisco, CA: Stripe Press, 2026.
An earlier Brand book that I praised in my opening comments is:
Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. New York: Viking Adult, 1994.