> you are restoring functionality that previously worked and then stopped, or are you creating new functionality Good maintenance prevents something from stopp

> you are restoring functionality that previously worked and then stopped, or are you creating new functionality Good maintenance prevents something from stopping to work in the first place. I'd frame maintenance as someone's care and effort to put up with something (Bernard Moitessier and "built to be low-maintenance" from my linked article [1] comes to mind), so I'm in strong disagreement with your distinction as stated. Maintenance, unlike building, is a task that will inevitably occur, but it's the question if you want to put up with it and how you're doing it. Building while ignoring maintenance is just complete negligence, and if you want to allow yourself and others to be negligent, I repaired quite a bit already to understand that fixing stuff can require quite a lot of unforeseen (re-)building. I honestly think this mindset was appropriate 10-30 years ago, but doesn't sit well in our current climate anymore, whether politically, economically nor otherwise. > I would also extend the notion of functionality to include what people perceive as value. So new art that makes someone feel something would be creation. I wanted to avoid bringing art into this discussion because art exists purely by maintaining a dialog about it. Artifacts need to be created first, sure, but as soon as they're published they'll just become excerpts to advance in that dialog (hopefully), and there's still the artist/viewer dichotomy in the perception of value and its affiliation of feelings. Making those pieces parts of art history requires maintenance, and that's the same collective effort as with technology. > it seems like PG left maintenance out of his proposed value system. Seems like we're spot on.