Maintenance: Of Everything by Stewart Brand

“Maintainers learn to be causation experts when dealing with repair. They build two narratives: one for finding the problem and one for solving the problem. Working backward from the visible part of the problem to the issues hidden behind it is detective work into what caused what. Then, with a solution (or plausible hypothesis) in hand, they have to figure out the correct repair—how to re-ravel the skein of causation in a way that avoids collateral damage and ensures the problem will go away and stay away. That can be an elaborate caper story, carefully linking one crafty ploy after another in the most efficient sequence.”

-Stewart Brand