Avatar photoSteven Savage

How Deep Does the B.S. Go?

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Lately I was speculating on the role of B.S. in our economy, politics, and technology. I’d spell it out (and swear more probably) but I do have some discretion!

We’ve normalized the idea that some people are honestly, lying to us. We expect that we’re being lied to be marketing forces, by the latest trends, and by politicians. It’s honestly so normalized, it seems we can’t imagine a less deception-free world.

(It also makes me realize how people can get blaise about COVID.)

In turn, we’ve also normalized that people we like are lying. Yeah, that famous tech guy is hyping stuff, but we like his product. Sure the politician we voted for is spouting demented nonsense, but they’re our politician. We go to see a movie we know we’ve been sold on in the negative sense or a restaurant whos food is just “OK” but you know, advertising and familiarity.

What’s struck me lately, is that we are probably too used to lying as well.

When I’ve seen people rallying to the defense of people, media, and so on that they like you an hear them repeat talking points. You can tell with just a bit of empathy that many people don’t really or exactly believe what they say. But to defend what they like for whatever reason,

I even found myself tempted to do it (which tells me I do do it, I just didn’t catch myself).

I’m wondering how deep the B.S. in our media-saturated, pundit-heavy, social media culture goes by now. I mean yes humans have always lied to others and themselves, but it feels pretty amplified and survival-adverse in my experience. How much of our lives, as individuals, is just lying about stuff?

I think some of it is definitely internet and media culture. Say the right things, do the right things, and you get money, attention, and might even become some kind of Influencer or Pundit. You can lie for a living if you play your cards right! Whatever B.S. problems we had in the past, you can do it faster, giving less time for experience and other people to provide restraining feedback.

In a time of chaos and climate change, this is even more disturbing. We’ve got a lot of problems to solve, or at least survive, and if we’ve all internalized outright deception to an extent, it’s going to be much harder. When everyone is busy not telling the truth, it gets harder to tell the truth, and even when a bunch of people do, too many might not out of various motivations.

I know at least I’ll be watching myself closer. But this is going to haunt me.

Steven Savage

Optimized Failure

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I saw an online conversation about the book How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra. In this book that I apparently have to buy, the author mentions that resilient systems are not optimized systems. To have a network, an organization, a team be resilient you need redundancy, slack time, backup, vacation time, whatever. Doing something perfectly doesn’t mean you’ll be able to keep doing it because being able to keep doing it isn’t part of actually doing it.

This is a very obvious statement that very obviously gets missed everywhere. If you’ve ever had to explain to someone that their network needs backup or that the fastest transport route isn’t necessarily reliable you get the idea. I know I’ve been there.

I also think it explains a lot about the brittleness in today’s world. We see collapsing ecosystems, housing prices going out of reach, and stagnant wages. We’re supposedly in this high-tech age with fast deliveries and electronic banking, an optimized age, but it’s fraying isn’t it?

A big part of this is that we figured businesses, hell even government, should all be optimized to one goal – profit. Make money really well, and that’s it! Of course, at that point all you get good at is making money – probably very fast of course. You have quarterly reports to make after all.

I think this means a lot of companies and other organizations are brittle as they’re optimized to just make money. They’re not resilient as they rely entirely on getting as much cash as possible. Sure they can spend that cash when things are painfully non-resilient, to get through bad markets and so on, but it’s not the same as actually enduring. Ask anyone who’s been through a third round of layoffs.

It also means that there’s damage to the resilience of society. Regulatory capture means there’s less resilience brought by laws and policies. Layoffs to protect the bottom line destroy lives. The environment takes a hit from our pollution and dumping and the like. Bought-off politicians avoid doing anything to help people, anything resilient.

Profit-focus is just another form of optimization. Like optimization, it backfires.

Today I hear talk about the kind of larger crisis our world is in. But I think a lot of it comes down to optimizations in profit-seeking. We got so good at turning things into money, we ignored resilience. Now we’re going to have to switch back or face some pretty severe consequences.

I know what order I expect, sadly.

Steven Savage

The Money In Cleanup

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I have an acquaintance that helps migrate businesses off of ancient and inappropriate databases onto more recent ones. If you wonder how ancient and inappropriate let me simply state “not meant for industry” and “first created when One Piece the anime started airing” and you can guess. Now and then he literally goes and cleans up questionable and persisting bad choices.

In the recent unending and omnipresent discussions of AI, I saw a similar proposal. A person rather cynical about AI mused someone might make a living in the next few years backing a company’s tech and processes OUT of AI. Such things might seem ridiculous, until you consider my aforementioned acquaintance and the fact he gets paid to help people back out past decisions. Think of it as “migration from a place you shouldn’t have migrated to.”

It’s weird to think in technology, which always seems (regrettably) to be about forward motion and moving forward that there’s money in reversing decisions. Maybe it was the latest thing and now it’s not, or maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time (it wasn’t), but now you need someone to help you get out of your choice. Fortunately there are people who have turned “I told you so” into a service.

I find these “back out businesses” to be a good and needed reminder that technology is really not about forward. Yeah, the marketing guys and investors may want it, but as anyone who’s spent time in the industry knows, it’s not the case. Technology is a tool, and if the tool doesn’t work or is a bad choice, you want out of it. The latest, newest, fasted is not always the best – and may not be the best years later. Technology is not always about forward, even if someone tells you it is (before they sell you yet another new gizmo).

Considering the many, many changes in the world of tech, from social media to search to privacy, I wonder how much more “back out businesses” might evolve. Will there be coaches to get you to move to federated social media? How can you help a company get out of a bad relationship with a service vendor with leaky security and questionable choices? For that matter can we maybe take a look at better hosting arrangements and websites that aren’t ten frameworks in a trenchcoat?

I don’t know, and the world is in a terribly unpredictable state. But I’m amused to think that somewhere in my lifetime the big tech boom might be “oops, sorry.” Maybe we can say “moving away is really moving forward,” get some TED talks, and make not making bad immediate choices cool.

Steven Savage