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Every old church I've ever been in has had some kind of donation drive on the notice board asking for help replacing missing tiles, rotting roof beams etc. I d
by lexicality 5y ago
Every old church I've ever been in has had some kind of donation drive on the notice board asking for help replacing missing tiles, rotting roof beams etc.
I don't know if the British were just exceptionally bad church builders and contemporary European churches are doing just fine but I would hazard a guess that no, they also require spectacularly large amounts of maintenance to keep the weather out too.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoTrue, but this is preventing a kind of decay that software is, by its digital nature, immune to. Information doesn't weather or rot. There's no software equivalent to "missing tiles" or "rotting roof beams".
- et1337 5y ago“Link rot” and “bit rot” are terms that have entered our common vocabulary. I think information gets weathered down by contact with humans, who are an incredible source of entropy.
- titzer 5y agoYes, this kind of upkeep is definitely required. Replacing little things as they break and keeping an eye out for issues. Old things require this upkeep, which is a different thing from rebuilding, replacing, or upgrading. But the goal of upkeep is to keep the thing in good shape, and usually without any visible change at all, rather than transforming it into something different (assumedly better, but not really). Upkeep is preservation, conservation. We've somehow forgotten how to do that for the vast majority of things.
- jart 5y agoThen consider NASA Voyager. It's been floating around the galaxy for 44 years. If all goes well, its onboard computer won't run out of power until October 10, 2166.