The temporary tends to become permanent

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Since systems don’t go away, and since they occupy space, our landscape is now littered with the bleached bones and rotting carcasses of old attempted solutions to our problems.

—John Gall, Systemantics

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair, and expected to be removed by 1909.

Any temporary thing, fix, solution or artifact that does the job — or even a job, if not the one you necessarily had in mind — will tend to become permanent. It will embed itself into the accreting, silting up on the riverbed, encrusting into Burgess Shale. Limpets attach to it, run processes of it, and the inconvenience of removing it and putting in place something more permanent quickly becomes harder

See also

• When budget allows
• Systemantics, John Gall’s wonderful exposition of the horror of systems.