The word of the Lorax But now, says the Once-ler, Now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax careconservation
This obsession with permanence I think a lot about the lifecycle of websites. I’m frustrated by so much of the short-term thinking I see in the world today, and the way we think about websites is a part of that: it’s “normal” for them to just go up in smoke as soon as their authors stop paying attention. People switch platforms and providers and break links without a second thought. It pains me to see people build websites with no feeling of obligation to them — when you put something out into the world, it is your responsibility to care for it. At the same time, I wonder if this obsession with permanence is misplaced. Wesley Aptekar-Cassels, How Websites Die care
To love deeply a world of things Care brings the worlds of action and meaning back together, and reconnects the necessary work of maintenance with the forms of attachment that so often (but invisibly, at least to analysts) sustain it. ...What if we care about our technologies, and do so in more than a trivial way? This feature or property has sometimes been extended to technologies in the past, but usually only ones that come out of deep folk or craft traditions, and rarely the products of a modern industrial culture. ...Is it possible to love, and love deeply, a world of things? Steven J. Jackson, Rethinking Repair carecraftproducts
You've got to do this with love Third, you’ve got to do this with love. You’ll need to take a radically different approach to supporting and partnering with customers to help them adjust to new and better ways of working. Dear Microsoft careux
Snipping the dead blooms A Quote by Robin Sloan newpublic.substack.com I recognize this is a very niche endeavor, but the art and craft of maintaining a homepage, with some of your writing and a page that's about you and whatever else over time, of course always includes addition and deletion, just like a garden — you're snipping the dead blooms. I do this a lot. I'll see something really old on my site, and I go, “you know what, I don't like this anymore,” and I will delete it. But that's care. Both adding things and deleting things. Basically the sense of looking at something and saying, “is this good? Is this right? Can I make it better? What does this need right now?” Those are all expressions of care. And I think both the relentless abandonment of stuff that doesn't have a billion users by tech companies, and the relentless accretion of garbage on the blockchain, I think they're both kind of the antithesis, honestly, of care. carerepairwwwgardenstechnology
Maintenance and Care An Article by Shannon Mattern placesjournal.org Maintenance has taken on new resonance as a theoretical framework, an ethos, a methodology, and a political cause. This is an exciting area of inquiry precisely because the lines between scholarship and practice are blurred. To study maintenance is itself an act of maintenance. To fill in the gaps in this literature, to draw connections among different disciplines, is an act of repair or, simply, of taking care — connecting threads, mending holes, amplifying quiet voices. Rethinking RepairWhat this site is repaircareconnectionknowledge
Man in the Middle: The Designer A Book by C. Wright Mills www.carlosvieirareis.com The old unityDefining craftsmanshipThe central value for which they standThe star systemAs if it were an advertisement+3 More designsociety
The old unity The most fundamental splits in contemporary life occur because of the break-up of the old unity of design, production and enjoyment. life
Defining craftsmanship By craftsmanship I refer to a style of work and a way of life having the following characteristics: In craftsmanship there is no ulterior motive for work other than the product being made and the processes of its creation. In craftsmanship, plan and performance are unified, and in both, the craftsman is master of the activity and of himself in the process. The craftsman is free to begin his working according to his own plan, and during the work he is free to modify its shape and the manner of its shaping. Since he works freely, the craftsman is able to learn from his work, to develop as well as use his capacities. The craftsman’s way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living. For him there is no split of work and play, of work and culture. His work is the mainspring of his life; he does not flee from work into a separate sphere of leisure; he brings to his non-working hours the values and qualities developed and employed in his working time. craftwork
The central value for which they stand What I am suggesting to you is that designers ought to take the value of craftsmanship as the central value for which they stand; that in accordance with it they ought to do their work; and that they ought to use its norms in their social and economic and political visions of what society ought to become. designcraft
The star system The distributor is ascendant over many producers who become the rank-and-file workmen of the commercially established cultural apparatus. The star system of American culture – along with the commercial hacks – tend to kill off the chance of the cultural workman to be a worthy craftsman. work
As if it were an advertisement He designs the product itself as if it were an advertisement, for his aim and his task – acknowledged by the more forthright – is less to make better products than to make products sell better.
The Big Lie “We only give them what they want.” This is The Big Lie of mass culture and of debased art, and also it is the weak excuse for the cultural default of many designers. culture
The Fetish of human life To understand the case of America today, one must understand the economic trends and the selling mechanics of a capitalist world in which the mass production and the mass sale of goods has become The Fetish of human life, the pivot both of work and of leisure. Existing commodities must be worn out more quickly for as the market is saturated, the economy becomes increasingly dependent upon what is called replacement. It is then that obsolescence comes to be planned and the economic cycle deliberately shortened. economics
The big split The big split among designers and their frequent guilt; the enriched muddle of ideals they variously profess and the insecurity they often feel about the practice of their craft; their often great disgust and their crippling frustration. design