14 August

The bridge collapse in Europe overnight. Stories. The story of the collapse is ‘wasn’t properly maintained’. Which means the story of maintenance wasn’t one that resonated with enough people. Vast amounts of the infrastructure of our societies is poorly maintained, not least the concrete we use, which is all a ticking time bomb, due to concrete cancer. We treat the things we build as ‘objects’, our stories about objects is that they just are, you build them and then leave them. Nothing is an object, all things need to be constantly maintained. The statistics on the number of ordinary homes worldwide that don’t get even basic maintenance are pretty horrifying. Add that to the public infrastructure like this that isn’t maintained, and I think it’s clear the consequences the stories we tell ourselves have. If we don’t discover how to love and nurture what we create, it will crumble around us. Objects and technologies are members of our society, but right now they’re invisible to democracy.