[Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?

[Ishi Crew]

I think of farming and food production (my grandparents were small or
family farmers though they actually had or used huge tracts of land because
few people lived in that area--north dakota) and i knew people who lived
partly by hunting , gathering and gardening in WV.  At one time a large
fraction of US population was involved in farming--like 50%. Now they say
its just 3% (though there is a much larger population).  However you have a
huge supply chain for food---trucking, road maintenance for all these
trucks, energy industry for transport, processing food (sometimes into junk
or conveniance food, bottled water, coca cola, plastic, huge stores with
cleaning , stocking , clerks and security personnel and more) .

So the 3% figure which makes things seem simpler, like GIS, involves
another kind of complexity. I used to have order paper topographic maps for
my hiking trips---now i can get them on my smart phone in like 5 minutes
(if i can remember the websites)--very simple.   But making a smart phone
and websites is complex.  And even having a smartphone makes my life more
complex---have to learn how to use it, and not lose or break it, or have it
stolen.

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 2:45 AM Hanlie Pretorius <hanlie.pretorius at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I found this article very thought provoking - thank you for compiling
> it. I wrote down some of my thoughts here, perhaps not much new for
> people on this list.
>
> Often people assert that the 1980s marked a turning point in the
> economy with regard to spending priorities, implying that before then
> maintenance was more of a priority. Does this mean that economic
> reasons are the major ones for lack of maintenance? I suspect so.
>
> Was anything else different in the past or was maintenance a problem
> throughout human history?
>
> What about the boredom factor? I sometimes find it difficult to
> motivate myself to brush my teeth because it's such a repetitive and
> boring activity.
>
> I believe people start appreciating maintenance when they have to do
> it themselves or if they have to pay directly to have it done
> (provided it's done properly). Perhaps payment for maintenance should
> not be part of general taxes, it should be a specific levy that can be
> traced back to actual maintenance performed.
>
> The more complex our society gets, the more extensive and intensive
> the maintenance requirements get. Under the guise of  simplifying our
> lives, technology has pushed maintenance to the back stage where other
> people have to think for us. In my industry (Geographic Information
> Systems), the move away from desktop software to the web has
> simplified (the quality of the simplification is debatable) GIS for
> users not trained in GIS. But behind the scenes, my work has become
> far more complex.
>
> Perhaps we humans just can't help ourselves when it comes to
> maintenance, just like we can't help repeating the cycles of
> civilisation rise, complication and collapse.
>
> I live in South Africa where the visible evidence of no maintenance or
> incompetent maintenance is just downright scary.
>
> Regards
> Hanlie
>
>
> > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 10:09:55 -0400
> > From: lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org>
> > To: Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
> > Subject: [Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CAFfY7rEZbMyYg1jr2dWYtubzU5-j1JniB1PAZj+MP2==
> GmfSwA at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > Hey, everybody.
> >
> > The three Maintainers co-directors - Andy Russell, Jess Meyerson, and
> > I - pulled
> > together a blog post laying out the factors/explanations we often hear
> > about why maintenance is neglected.
> > <
> http://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance
> >
> > As is often the case these days, this post attempts to echo back what
> we've
> > been hearing from others - including all the folks on this list!
> >
> > And as always, we are especially keen to hear feedback from you all.
> We're
> > hoping this post kickstarts discussion about how to think and theorize
> > about and empirically study these issues. Please give us feedback in
> anyway
> > you see fit - in the blog comments, on Twitter, via private/direct
> > messages, such as email, and ESPECIALLY on this list!!! :-)
> >
> > Hope everyone is doing well.
> >
> > Lee
> >
> > --
> > Co-Director
> > The Maintainers
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> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
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>
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