Maintenance & repair: philosophy of technology after production
Chair(s): Mark Thomas Young (University of Oslo, Norway)
Maintenance is one of the fastest growing topics in philosophy of technology. Emerging from a recognition that existing work in philosophy of technology has tended to focus disproportionately on the design and creation of new things, this nascent topic aims to achieve a more balanced appreciation of technology by exploring the widespread and diverse range of practices we employ to keep things going after they have been built, produced or constructed. Doing so helps enable philosophy of technology to speak to a range of current and urgent concerns, such as the environment and sustainability, waste and material flows or the renewed interest in the material and temporal dimensions of technology itself.
The proposed panel emerges from the work of the SPT special interest group “Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology” which since April 2022 has worked to promote and consolidate research in philosophy of technology on the topic of maintenance. The panel aims to showcase research by three philosophers who are currently exploring new directions in this emerging subfield of philosophy of technology. Together, these contributions highlight the wide relevance of the topic of maintenance in philosophy of technology, by engaging with ethical, metaphysical and sociological dimensions of maintenance practices.
The first presentation, by Mark Thomas Young (University of Oslo) explores the notion of artifact metabolisms by examining the way in which they can serve as sites for the passage of materials, such as spare or replacement parts or consumables such as lubricants or protective coatings. Yet despite the close association to sustainability by enabling repair and reducing waste, this presentation aims to explore how the metabolism of particular artifacts kinds are often contested by different social groups, including producers, users and activists. The second presentation, by Tim Juvshik (Middlebury College) examines the significance of maintenance practices for debates on the nature of artifacts in analytic metaphysics. By exploring resonances between the social practice view (Juvshik, forthcoming) of artifact kinds and recent work on the processual nature of artifact maintenance (Young 2024), Juvshik examines how artifacts kinds and norms of maintenance influence and change each other over time. The third presentation, by Brooke Rudow (University of Central Florida) examines how contemporary restrictions and challenges users face in repairing artifacts they own, intersects with deeper existential concerns surrounding the nature of human communities. By drawing on the recent controversies surrounding the right to repair farm equipment alongside recent work in environmental philosophy, Rudow’s talk aims to outline how the right to repair itself enables better ways of being in the world.
Presentations of the Symposium
Artifact metabolisms: the material flows of an iphone
Mark Thomas Young
University of Oslo
The ancient paradox of the Ship of Theseus – in which the materials of a boat are gradually replaced over time - underscores a feature of artifacts which has largely been overlooked. While most philosophers have approached the paradox as an opportunity to explore metaphysical questions surrounding identity and change, the processes by which artifacts exchange matter with their environments has attracted relatively little attention, not only in philosophy but also within scholarship on technology more generally. Yet gaining a deeper understanding of these processes is clearly important: not only do most artifacts exchange material with their environments in some way throughout their histories, but the extent to which they do so is increasingly recognized as crucial for achieving more sustainable patterns of consumption and fulfilling our rights as consumers and owners of artifacts.
The first section of this presentation aims introduce and examine the notion of artifact metabolism (Evnine 2016; Young 2024) by exploring how objects serve as sites through which materials flow in the form of spare or replacement parts and consumables such as lubricants or paint. As perhaps the most pervasive activity performed under the guise of maintenance and repair, the replacement of materials and parts encourages us to reflect, not only on the complex and heterogenous temporalities of the objects which surround us, but also on the wider context in which they exist. Insofar as the replacement of parts demands interchangeability and standardization, artifact metabolism is itself often a hard-won achievement requiring the coordination of various actors. Yet far from being a mere ‘feature’ – metabolisms are deeply connected to the achievement that technologies themselves often represent. Many of the most celebrated aspects of modern technology, from the reliability of aircraft engines to the longevity and structural integrity of engineered structures – depend crucially on processes through which parts and materials come to be replaced over time. At the same time however, the metabolic natures of artifacts are not fixed and neither do they remain uncontested.
The second section of this presentation aims to examine how the metabolism of artifacts may be negotiated between different actors by exploring the case study of the iphone. We’ll begin by reviewing attempts by Apple to constrain the metabolism of the phone, by restricting the accessibility of OEM parts and creating barriers to replacement through initiatives such as software pairing or designing phones in ways which discourage user repairs.
Then we’ll look at how these initiatives are balanced by attempts to facilitate the metabolism of the device by a range of other actors, including third party parts manufacturers in China and right to repair activists who disseminate the knowledge and equipment required for the replacement of parts and consumables. As I’ll argue, this unique ecology of repair helps to determine the complex temporality of the iphone – a device which serves as a site through which a wide range of parts and materials flow.
References
Young, Mark Thomas (2024) “Technology in Process: Maintenance and the Metaphysics of Artifacts” in Mark Thomas Young & Mark Coeckelbergh (eds) Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology: Keeping Things Going. New York: Routledge pp., 58-85
Evnine, Simon. J (2016) Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions and Organisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Maintenance of ethnological artifacts: from preservation to reconciliation
Mark Theunissen
Delft University of Technology
This paper extends the growing reorientation within the philosophy of technology to thematize the maintenance of technological artifacts to cultural artifacts, specifically ethnological artifacts in museum collections. By surveying how various maintenance practices affect the status and function of ethnological artifacts, which are almost continuously under critical scrutiny, we can learn important lessons about the maintenance of technological artifacts. After discussing the return of the Kogi mask as exemplifying the conflicts in the maintenance practices of ethnological artifacts, the paper discusses three maintenance regimes that shape ethnological artifacts’ material and immaterial status. The upshot is that the perspective of maintenance offers insight into contradictions and conflicts in our understanding of the nature and function of ethnological artifacts. The paper ends with a reflection on the lessons that can be learned from practices and debates around the maintenance of ethnological artifacts for technological artifacts more generally.
Brokedown tractors and the existential need for a right to repair
Brooke Rudow
University of Central Florida
Historically the freedom to maintain and repair was taken for granted. These activities needed no legal category to allow or disallow them; they were understood simply as part of ownership. Many of us already recognize, likely with some frustration, that owning something comes with a host of maintenance and repair responsibilities. I have to take care of the things I own if I want them to work or to last. It is only in the last decade or so that the question of the permissibility of doing so has become a pressing legal concern. Does owning something give me the right to do with it what I will? Do property rights include the right to repair? These seem like bizarre questions at first glance but, given that new and emerging technologies incorporate increasingly complicated computer systems and software, often connected to information sharing systems, it has become unclear what one has a right to and to do when owning a thing. Consumers argue that they unjustly lack access to repair information, that completing repairs themselves voids warranties, or that they face legal action for doing so. Manufacturers insist that consumer repair would violate copyright and other intellectual property laws, along with compromising safety and privacy (Grinvald and Tur-Sinai 2024). The debate over these issues is rich and heated, tending to fall into four broadly construed arenas of concern: safety/privacy, economic, political, and environmental. There is much to say about each, but in this presentation, I would like to introduce another way, a deeper and more foundational way, of framing the need for a right to maintain and repair.
I will begin the presentation by briefly outlining the major arguments associated with the arenas of concern above. I will show that, as strong as they are, they each orbit around a deeper existential question about who we are and ought to be as a society and political community. I insist that we must answer this question in order to give these arguments normative force and ultimately secure a right to repair. In the second section, I initiate such an answer by drawing connections between maintenance, repair, identity, and care. Following the insights of Julia Corwin and Vinay Gidwani (and others) that repair work is care work, I will argue that repair and maintenance practices are existential needs that contribute to our essential being as homemakers on this earth (Corwin and Gidwani 2021). In the final section, I return to rights. The rights we have and insist upon reflect the kinds of people we are as a community. They reflect our values, our aspirations, and our commitments. I will argue that by neglecting (or denying) a right to maintain and repair, we increasingly foreclose the existential possibilities for better ways of being in the world.
Through all this, my exemplar will be the tractor. Though there are myriad devices to choose from, the tractor is of particular interest, not least because of the pending case against John Deere for allegedly restricting farmers from repairing their farm equipment, but also because I am persuaded by Paul Thompson’s Agrarian Vision (2010). I believe it is much in the spirit of what I have in mind here, and I will, if time allows, remark on the centrality of a right to repair for the actualization of such a vision.
References
Corwin, Julia E., and Vinay Gidwani. 2021. “Repair Work as Care: On Maintaining the Planet in the Capitalocene.” Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12791.
Grinvald, Leah Chan, and Ofer Tur-Sinai. 2024. “Defending the Right to Repair.” In Feminist Cyberlaw, edited by Meg Leta Jones and Amanda Levendowski, 1st ed., 25–37. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14086449.5.
Thompson, Paul. 2010. The Agrarian Vision. University of Kentucky Press. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813125879/the-agrarian-vision.
