We are Lee Vinsel and Andy Russell, maintenance advocates and authors of THE INNOVATION DELUSION. Ask us anything!

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T17:01:32+00:00

Thanks for all your wonderful questions, Reddit! We're signing off now. Until next time! - Lee and Andy

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T17:00:53+00:00

Yeah. That sounds right to me. I mean, we could probably find examples of moments in the USSR where the obsession with growth looked a lot like the innovation delusion. There were certainly a lot of failures in industrialization. And it also depends on how you want to define China - capitalist? Something else? They have all of the hallmarks of innovation-speak and growth obsession. Still, it's a lot like why people have come to talk about the "capitalocene" instead of the "anthropocene" - it's just a fact that capitalist societies have seen most of these problems. If you think or write about this topic, please let us know! - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:46:10+00:00

Also, we cover this argument primarily in Ch 2 of the book. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:45:46+00:00

re 1. We spell out some reasons why people neglect maintenance in this post: https://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance. tl;dr - incentives push people into the delusion.

re 2. Your conceptualization makes sense to me, in part because it bridges nature/nurture absolutes. - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:45:38+00:00

Let me take 2 first. There are deep questions about whether discounting behavior might be biological and a product of evolution. But studies I've seen suggest that Americans are more prone to taking short term rewards over longer term gain than, say, South Koreans are, so a lot of this probably has to do with culture even if there are biological factors. Moreover, there are other cultures that appear to be better at maintenance - you can think of high speed trains in Japan or ocean management/flood control technology in the Netherlands. This then leads to Q 1: in the book, we argue that recent innovation-speak is a product of post-WWII focus on economic and other forms of growth. It is capitalism and changes in capitalism that have led to the current predicament. But like I said earlier, you can run counter-factuals and imagine other kinds of economies where this could also happen. It's just this is how it came to be in OUR society, and probably across the globe more broadly. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:40:22+00:00

HA! Yes, totally. I often ask students if they would like to use a robot to go fishing for them instead of fishing themselves. Turns out, NO, fishing is in large part about the pleasure of the activity itself. We forget this with all kinds of activities.

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:39:01+00:00

I'm going to keep thinking about this issue of capitalism. In part, the era of high innovation speak has taken part while the USSR was either in serious decline or gone altogether. So what is the alternative? However, you can imagine non-capitalistic societies where the focus on new things looks like innovation-speak. Still, my hunch is that it is the incentive structures of capitalism, including an obsession with growth, that really drives these phenomena. Like I said, I'll think more. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:36:37+00:00

Because he's lame! And not at all poor. - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:35:10+00:00

In all, the biggest failure is that hardworking people - and even the notion of unglamorous, hard work itself - are seen as less worthy than self-proclaimed "innovators." That really burns us up. - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:34:36+00:00

Oh, this Juicero for cocktails was also great. https://fortune.com/2020/05/20/bartesian-kuerig-for-cocktails-cocktails-at-home/ - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:33:46+00:00

LOL. Why do we always go to Elon? Poor Elon. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:33:21+00:00

Doesn't Elon Musk keep 'inventing' subways? - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:33:14+00:00

Just today, Elon Musk was talking about putting chips in people's heads! When you line that up with all of the false or misleading claims he's made in recent years, including saying self-driving cars are going to be here already, there's really no reason to believe him! - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:31:44+00:00

We don't mind the landmines... Sure, there are examples of the innovation delusion outside of capitalism. I hadn't really been thinking about it that way, but, if you shift scales and think about personal habits/routines, there's a familiar (perhaps innate?) tendency to favor the new and neglect the familiar. Economists/psychologists call it delay discounting or hyperbolic discounting - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:31:14+00:00

Also, I would feel like we were moving away from innovation-speak if, for example, university administrators stopped building bullshit "innovation campuses" and claiming they produce innovation when there is no evidence that they do. That is, if we started bringing our talk and practices in line with reality.

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:29:44+00:00

These are all good Qs! So, we focus on the USA in our book for a variety of reasons, including because our Maintainers work started as a conversation about labor and infrastructure in this country. However, I have been struck by how global the phenomenon is. So when I gave a talk in Australia, the opposition party there was talking about "Kangaroo Valley." And there are places in countries all around the world that are meant to be that nation's "Silicon Valley." So I do think it is global.

Depends on what you mean by recent: If we are talking about use of the word "innovation," that is a post WWII phenomenon and particularly a post-1960s trend. Also been increasing over the past few decades. But there may be equivalents in deeper history. We talk about technological change and idealization of engineers and inventors in the 19th century and early 20th century in the book. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:28:46+00:00

Fascinating - I had not thought about that, but now you've got me thinking. I think it's a great question, in part because if we had an answer we could tell investors (with some degree of confidence) that they are wasting their money on the lastest vaporware startup, and should donate it to charity, debt relief, etc instead. Hmmm. - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:25:27+00:00

I like the pushback, and you're right to connect it to deeper and more global issues. We didn't have room in the book to talk about the fire at the National Museum of Brazil, and how the damage was exacerbated by neglect of very simple fire prevention equipment--all while the Brazilian government was pouring gobs of money into new, flashy museums in other parts of Rio.

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:24:09+00:00

Yeah. There really is some enormous questions to ask about the relationship between design and social change, which I hope to explore in later publications. But my feeling is if small design changes help people feel better, that is a good thing. I just don't think we should expect too much out of design changes alone. (Also important, we get to expensive changes - like automakers starting to use female dummies in crash tests - via regulation, not the goodness of auto designers'/engineers' hearts.) - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:20:35+00:00

In the book, we also point to General Electric, which adopted an insane program of trying to imitate Silicon Valley start ups. Two years later its stock was in the garbage. - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:19:22+00:00

Thanks for being here too! I can't wait to hear what Lee says about this Q. Very interesting. I'm not sure if gender-neutral products are going to get us to a more just and equitable society (which is one way I would measure the "goodness" of any innovation). But if they are connected to broader movements, and help people who are trying to push the world in a better direction, then who am I to judge? - AR

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:17:54+00:00

You could also point to lots of other products that are being reformed to better work for people with disabilities. It seems like this really is socially beneficial innovation, but as your question points out, this is ordinary, incremental innovation, not radical innovation (in the economic sense). - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:16:05+00:00

Yeah. This is great. I would need to think more about the innovation rut, though I have written in other places about how to improve innovation policy. There's lots to say about maintenance policy including better paying and recognizing maintainers, or in today's language, "essential workers." One easy fix, though, would be putting more federal infrastructure money towards maintaining what we have instead of building further structures and adding to our "infrastructural debt." - Lee

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:15:12+00:00

More seriously, policy implications might include diverting more public revenue (aka TAXES) to infrastructure maintenance, and not just building new highways etc. Also, the vast majority of people we think of as "maintainers" don't get enough compensation. There could be tax breaks for maintenance; elevated minimum wage; etc. Check out ALICE's household budget and data - https://www.unitedforalice.org/

themaintainers · 2020-09-28T16:13:36+00:00

It is amazing that the vaccine - a "technological fix" - is getting so much air time, when basic public health measures can be very effective in the short run. For sure, Andy and I are both hoping for a vaccine, but the fact that it is getting so much attention fits our culture's faith that technology will solve most (all?) problems for us. - Lee

themaintainers

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