# 341 | Stewart Brand on Maintenance as an Organizing Principle

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sean-carroll-s-mindscape-science-society-philosophy-culture-arts-and-ideas-444522/341-stewart-brand-on-maintenance-as-an-organizing-principle
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Podcast: [Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas](https://stenobird.com/podcast/sean-carroll-s-mindscape-science-society-philosophy-culture-arts-and-ideas-444522)
Published: 2026-01-19T13:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://1d1ac211-8392-45fe-82db-99fa7f77076e.libsyn.com/341-stewart-brand-on-maintenance-as-an-organizing-principle
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Duration seconds: 4361

## Resource

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote W.B. Yeats. I don't know about the centre, but the tendency of things to fall apart is pretty universal, ultimately due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anyone living in a society or involved with technology must therefore be interested in the concept of maintenance -- keeping systems working. In his book Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One , Stewart Brand looks at the challenges and rewards of this concept. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/19/341-stewart-brand-on-maintenance-as-an-organizing-principle/ S upport Mindscape on Patreon . Stewart Brand received an undergraduate degree in biology from Stanford University. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog , which won a National Book Award. He founded the journal CoEvolution Quarterly and the WELL electronic community, and was a co-founder of the Long Now Foundation . He has been called " the 20th century's top influencer ." Web site Amazon author page Wikipedia

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