What do I usually do? I find things and I found things. Things I find include tools, ideas, books, and people, which I blend and purvey. Things I’ve founded and co-founded include the Trips Festival (1966), Whole Earth Catalog (1968), Hackers Conference (1984), The WELL (1984), Global Business Network (1988), The Long Now Foundation (1996) and All Species Inventory (2001).

Right now, I’m focusing on maintenance, partly because I notice in myself and everybody else a reluctance to think about maintenance because it’s a chore, it’s a nuisance, it’s a problem. There’s no economic short-term value in it, and because with the Long Now Foundation, we’re looking at becoming a long-term institution to stay with the clock.

That’s based on noticing the difference between Stonehenge, Egyptian pyramids, and the Ise Shrine in Japan. Nobody knows what the hell Stonehenge was really for. We know a lot about pharaonic religion with the pyramids, but it is as dead as a doornail. Yet the Ise Shrine, expressing Shinto culture in Japan, is as alive today as it was 1500 years ago, and it is the beating heart of Japanese culture. What’s the difference?

The difference is, I guess, maintenance, and it’s institutionalizing. We’ve got a lot more respect for institutions and trying to understand their institutions. Alexander Rose, the director of Long Now Foundation, is actively funding and pursuing the study of longevity in institutions. What actually makes it work? What makes them earn their longevity and keep it in a changing world?

Well, the whole concept of maintenance, I think, is in the thick of all of that, so I’m spending all my time now in this room with all these books, sorting out how to think about maintenance in general.

Stewart Brand

http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Home.html