A few weeks ago, I replied to a thread on Hacker News about a "leaked" talk by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The key phrase I tried to pick apart was
So imagine a non-arrogant programmer that actually does what you want
I had assumed he was referring to situations similar to my own experience as a software developer interacting with customers back in the 1980s. Programming was still a relatively new thing, and most people didn't understand how data was stored and processed. I considered it my job to probe what they really wanted to have, and figure out how I could meet their needs by impedance matching them to what was feasible. This smoothing over of their wants and needs with reality made everyone happy, in the end.
A few days ago, I watched Cory Doctorow's presentation at DefCon32 about the ongoing Enshittification of everything. He delivered, as usual for him, a passionate and fact stuffed critique of the way things are going, and how we got there. It's been quietly flowing through my mapper mind, bumping up against all of the other chunks of knowledge I've recently pondered.
This morning, I was reading a thread about Thea Lim's The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age.
She helped me see that though I have had my self-worth tied up in work, there was a deep cause of disastisfaction once I was out of the work force. I've always been good at explaining complex things in a way others can understand. (Impedance matching, again!) This bumped against some other things I was pondering, and then the penny dropped
I was wrong about what Eric Schmidt meant, and I see that now.
I had made a
category error
and assumed he was just trying to get good results, or meet some weird quirk
of his design sense, like Steve Jobs is said to have done, and was getting
frustrated. Oh boy, was I ever wrong.
Assuming that Schmidt was
talking bout overriding ethical concerns is a way better fit for the amount
of emotion this seems to hold for him.
Cory's right. We really do have to hold the line against this shit.
So there you have it... a brief journey through the thought process of a mapper, with a side of self-discovery
