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Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

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Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#81

Post by taneq »

euske wrote: post #45
milquetoastaf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. Yep, no other cultures maintain anything.

This is pretty laughable. To me, almost every Western country is half-broken. When I lived in the US, I was surprised how frequent power faults were there. Streets are full of bumps and corroded pipes were everywhere. And in Europe. Do they have any concept of a decent public bathroom over there? Oh, and don't get me started on how badly their trains are operating. I bet that many train accidents are due to the poor…

Yeah, Japan was my first thought when I read that. You can't tell me with a straight face that they don't maintain everything to within an inch of its life.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#82

Post by somethingsimple »

stonogo wrote: post #75
dismantlethesun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowe…

> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?

Of course.

Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old.

Not all kids are brats.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#83

Post by jredwards »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #72
whack wrote: post #50

You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" "Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places" Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single j…

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowe…

Not to be too pointed about it, but you don't have kids, do you?

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#84

Post by shriphani »

There is probably a distribution here that matters - without maintenance there is no foundation for innovation, without innovation there is no motivation to maintain - man wants to produce and consume newer ideas, materials, tools, items etc.

There's a great piece in the Lapham's quarterly about maintaining NYC's infrastructure and how without any maintenance, NYC would be replaced by forest cover within 200 years. Can't find it right now but it is a great read trust me.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#85

Post by Radim »

draw_down wrote: post #55
whack wrote: post #50

You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" "Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places" Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single j…

The glamor is fake, the dollars are real. (OK, fine the dollars aren't real either, but what they can buy is.)

I subscribe to the sentiment!

As a semi-philosophical aside: in what capacity are dollars not real, but the things you can buy with them are?

Since everything seems to be a means to an end, from glamour (gets you money), to money (gets you food) to food (provides energy to your cells) to species (reproduction, evolution) to more efficient use of resources, all accelerating the universal march toward the heat death of the universe.

At which point do things in this optimization chain become "real"? What makes a specific segment "not real"?

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#86

Post by lukeschlather »

richforrester wrote: post #77
dismantlethesun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowe…

Just a few reasons that come to mind: - They'd be yet another distraction - Who pays for the resources (space, nutrition, time) - What if you don't work in an office - Work environment might not be a great place for a kid

The typical work environment isn't a great place for parents either. Adding kids might be an opportunity to improve that.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#87

Post by theprop »

No, it's precisely the opposite! Maintainers (using whale oil for energy) would have driven every whale to extinction and left the world without an energy source a century ago. Maintainers (using horses for travel) would have drowned Manhattan in horse shit a century ago.

Innovation is if anything under-rated and under-funded and under-supported. The homes of hundreds of millions of people and energy itself is threatened by depleting fossil fuels and global warming...and some of the major efforts to stop this have depended on effectively "insane" entrepreneurs like Elon Musk...not a smart system! All the while hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs for just say unnecessary tests flows to negative value addition maintainers.

Maintainers mostly either conservatively follow & accept or exploit the current system. It's innovators who've driven down the cost of lighting your home to a few hours of income or the ubiquity & cheapness of books & information (perhaps to the detriment of wisdom but that's another story) to stopping war through protest to ending non-man-made famine.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#88

Post by maxerickson »

theprop wrote: post #87

No, it's precisely the opposite! Maintainers (using whale oil for energy) would have driven every whale to extinction and left the world without an energy source a century ago. Maintainers (using horses for travel) would have drowned Manhattan in horse shit a century ago. Innovation is if anything under-rated and under-funded and under-supported. The homes of hundreds of millions of people and energy itself is threat…

Wouldn't maintainers just be in small social groups, eating fruit and whatever else they happened to collect?

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#89

Post by prawn »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #72
whack wrote: post #50

You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" "Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places" Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single j…

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowe…

If I'm working from home, even if my 4yo has every toy in the house at his disposal, after a while he will inevitably come into the home office and spin around on the spare chair saying "Why do you have to wooooork so much? I need you to help me buuuuuiiiild something. Why can't you help me? I can't find (a particular piece of Lego). Why is Mama at wooooork? Why are you working?"

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#90

Post by prawn »

somethingsimple wrote: post #82
stonogo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?

Of course. Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old. Not all kids are brats.

Not all kids are 6-7 years old. And I assume you're talking about occasional visits rather than a daily replacement for childcare or a nanny.
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