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A review by dashtaisen
The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most by Lee Vinsel, Andrew L. Russell
informative
3.0
This book is really just a book-length remix of their article “Hail the Maintainers”. I thought the article was better than the book.
The first couple of chapters are quite good; the authors illustrate how the obsession with “innovation” emerged from the anxieties of the 1970s economic crisis and the hype generated by Silicon Valley. There are some thoughtful critiques of innovation and the highly-paid consulting firms that push them. I also appreciate their central point, that we need to focus less on newness and more on maintenance and care.
That said, the examples were kind of all over the place – sometimes insightful, often meandering, overly focused on the military, also weirdly fatphobic for some reason? The authors call for us to appreciate maintainers more, which is great! But then they go to an example about the importance of “passion” by Linus Effing Torvalds of all people. In a couple of anecdotes, the authors make an offhand remark about maintenance workers’ union affiliation, but don’t go into any meaningful detail around worker organizing. This seems especially strange given how many high-profile strikes have been organized by people whose work is central to social and economic infrastructure.
The first couple of chapters are quite good; the authors illustrate how the obsession with “innovation” emerged from the anxieties of the 1970s economic crisis and the hype generated by Silicon Valley. There are some thoughtful critiques of innovation and the highly-paid consulting firms that push them. I also appreciate their central point, that we need to focus less on newness and more on maintenance and care.
That said, the examples were kind of all over the place – sometimes insightful, often meandering, overly focused on the military, also weirdly fatphobic for some reason? The authors call for us to appreciate maintainers more, which is great! But then they go to an example about the importance of “passion” by Linus Effing Torvalds of all people. In a couple of anecdotes, the authors make an offhand remark about maintenance workers’ union affiliation, but don’t go into any meaningful detail around worker organizing. This seems especially strange given how many high-profile strikes have been organized by people whose work is central to social and economic infrastructure.