Taking responsibility for the impact of software

May 16, 2010 by Brian Hughes

Here’s Steve Jobs, from a recent email thread with Gawker’s Ryan Tate:

Do you create anything, or just criticize others (sic) work and belittle their motivations?

This last missive from Job’s is a nice rejoinder from a back-and-forth with Tate about Apple’s iPad platform (and related technologies). And if you don’t look too closely, you might be impressed by it.

By now it’s well-known that Apple draws the ire of the free software community. But Steve Jobs take the time (here in a private email conversation) to clearly articulate his views and motivations. Really? A CEO taking the time to pursue an email flame war with a spiteful blogger? Very respectable. Admirable, even.

That’s what it seems to take these days to engage the public, especially in the software development space. And I like Jobs’ response and his insistence on participation: he asks (I paraphrase), “Are you at least engaged in similar work?”

But wait, is that enough? Tate started the email thread by criticizing Jobs’ abuse of the language of “revolutions.” Does Jobs offer an adequate defense?

Jobs’ response is related to a too-easy dismissal: “If you don’t do X, you can’t criticize it.” But I don’t think that’s Jobs’ attitude in this case. Tate’s criticism against Apple is steeped in deep knowledge of the software world. I think Jobs’ is asking for empathy, saying (again I paraphrase), “It’s hard to bring these new technologies into the world, isn’t your quibble with us a minor one? Why can’t this discussion be more civil?” Or even, “It’s a mistake to equate what we’re doing here with something important.”

But then that’s why Tate is right and Jobs is, ultimately, a corporate ass: Jobs isn’t taking personal responsibility for his company’s ridiculous (“it’s magical” and “it’s revolutionary”) claims. Jobs’ insistence on deflating the significance of the iPad’s implications for the software community flies in the face of Apple’s language describing it. Once you say it’s revolutionary, there’s no going back and saying that you didn’t mean “in a cultural or political way” (Jobs’: “It’s not about freedom”).

So, frankly, this exchange turns out to be as offensive as it is instructive. I’m glad Tate shared it. Sure, we can empathize with Jobs… it is tough making great things. Especially complex things. But the work of understanding them – seeing their implications, assessing their value, and measuring their impact – is a shared responsibility between both developers and consumers. Indeed, it’s part of the cost of doing business, though easy to forget.

So, how can a development group take responsibility?

Do an impact study and publish it
Build assessment into your development process
Perform ongoing data analysis and research, and share it
And, of course, talk openly with your customers (at least Jobs got that one right!)… with luck, they’ll engage you in a fruitful conversation about culture, politics, and the future.

Can (and should) generalists lead experts?

May 13, 2010 by Brian Hughes

When does one decide to become a generalist? When did I?

Seth Godin insists that “art” should play a central role in the workplace. In Linchpin, he argues that seeing work as art is not only good, but imperative. I believe, however, that Godin would be better off calling his linchpin a generalist rather than an artist. This shift also highlights a consequence of Godin’s view: namely, that there are really two (very different) roles for linchpins: at the top of the proverbial corporate ladder, but also at the bottom. (After all, while considering his great flight attendant-come-linchpin as a maker of “generalism” rather than “art” is less satisfying, I think it’s a more reasonable view.)

Godin doesn’t say much about the linchpins that are stuck at the bottom. The good thing for reigning capitalists: they’re cheap, and relatively helpless. Why? There are so many of them. Democratic education is designed to produce generalists – but a sad consequence of poor educational performance is that it leads to bad generalists. Isn’t developing expertise a natural response to this situation? Indeed, hasn’t this been the emergent role of “higher” education? But now the predicament: the milieu of abundant expertise has taken the glamor away from generalism.

So what’s it like to be a school-aged person in the world today? You don’t have to look very far to see an abundance of despair (or, perhaps more tellingly, decadence). I think the reign of expertise is at least party to blame: expertise is the new mediocre, and the media’s obsession with expertise obscures the role of generalists.

On unlimited wealth, or the dream of it

March 31, 2010 by Brian Hughes

I have begun reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. One topic I find interesting is Godin’s support of the idea of an “unlimited” market (“Limited or Unlimited,” p. 30). I am always struck by the optimism of this perspective. For on this view, one should not behave as if there is a limited market for goods, but rather as if there is no limit to the money to be made. To me, this seems counterintuitive. I guess I don’t fault Godin’s perspective – that it may be advantageous to act as if a market is unlimited – so much as I am skeptical of the alleged fact itself.

I suspect there are economists out there with some thoughts about this, but I haven’t run into them yet lately. So, let’s run a thought-experiment.

Modernized countries have populations that increasingly rely on the labor of poorer countries. We (my fellow middle-class Americans) buy a lot of stuff, but we’re also thrifty. So, for example, when we’re faced with the choice of expensive paper towels or cheap paper towels, we’ll go out of our way to find the best towel at the best price. (For many of us, this activity takes up a considerably larger amount of our time than we’d like to admit.)

And that’s how we get to the part about American auto-makers shuttering their doors, and whole regions of the U.S. bereft of jobs: production happens in China; consumption happens in America. This seems inherently unsustainable: no sooner do we learn about unions driving jobs oversees than we learn about unionization oversees. (To say that this kind of economic growth is sustainable reminds me of the explanation of how the whole universe rests on the back of a turtle.)

But Godin chimes in and reminds us not to worry – that if we’re good enough, there will be jobs for us. Here’s why I think – even counterintuitively – that he’s right:

There’s lots of wealth in the world. Now you’re thinking, “Of course there’s a lot of wealth in the world, Brian, but the point is that is may not be available to the ever-expanding middle class (especially if the ranks of the lower class grow thin).” But one fact (if true) could turn this worry on its head: that people – especially extremely wealthy people – would be happy to live lives of extreme asceticism if they experienced an equally good kind of social and community life.

Or something like that.

I’m not saying this is the case, but it’s the only way I’ll buy into the vision of “unlimited markets.” On this view, trillions and trillions of dollars that are currently tucked away in capital (of one form or another) could be invested in labor, service, and industry (in the broadest sense). Without interest in widgets and dongles of every kind, that labor could be plied to strengthening good ol’ human interactions… and Godin could claim that his “linchpin” fits nicely within this system.

Perhaps the inner communist in me even hopes it’s true. If so, it certainly casts our obsesssion with material wealth and comfort in a tragic light.

A Disney-related setback for e-learning?

October 25, 2009 by Brian Hughes

“If you’ve spent money on an e-learning course in the last five years, you’re entitled to a full refund. We now admit that our courses don’t make you any smarter.”

OK, no one has said that yet, but if you’ve seen the recent news, then you know that Walt Disney has taken the bold step of responding to the threat of a class action lawsuit by offering refunds for “educational” materials sold in recent years – Baby Einstein videos.

“The Walt Disney Company’s entire Baby Einstein marketing regime is based on express and implied claims that their videos are educational and beneficial for early childhood development,” a letter from the lawyers said, calling those claims “false because research shows that television viewing is potentially harmful for very young children.”

Of course the real danger isn’t the degradation of a young child’s vision from frequent and extended use of the television. The problem seems to be about “fostering parent-child interaction.”

Having seen Baby Einstein material, I am somewhat shocked that Disney has acquiesced to removing the label “educational” from these products… it seems to acknowledge that products so labeled would literally have to raise a child’s IQ. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty tough new standard for education? (One that, perhaps, most “educational” products would have difficulty achieving? At least it would prove to be a new, hard-to-prove evaluative standard…)

But even more interesting, I think, is the apparent agreement that the videos are more or less worthless as learning tools – that you might as well turn off the tv and talk with your child. Could it be that this same outcome will be demonstrated all the way up the educational food chain?

A generic box is the college of the future

March 25, 2008 by Brian Hughes

Acording to this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, new campus is being built to spec in Chaska, Minnesota – that is, they are building it without knowing who the tenant will be, with the intention of leasing/renting space to a variety of schools. Is this what the college of the future looks like?

Perhaps. It’s a slick idea. As we’ve recently seen on Willoby & Himrod, U.S. colleges are exporting education around the world. So why not grow new campuses at home in the U.S.?

This could lead to competition for students, opening up whole new markets for undergraduates and professionals who would like to receive a degree from a distant college, but who prefer face-to-face instruction.

Will remote facilities be able to deliver the goods? Two possible developments, neither of which feels so good: 1) more traveling for star professors, and 2) more adjunct positions using a ready-made curriculum.

Shackled to problem-solving

November 10, 2007 by Brian Hughes

This article in the Times provides a brief introduction to a fad that’s sweeping through Silicon Valley these days: escapism.

Timothy Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek”, promotes “pulling the plug” on your fast, information-driven life (though no one, it seems, has actually read the book).

I admit, it sounds exciting, but then the details start to come to light: hiring personal assistants in India (who tells them what to do?), outsourcing your relationships, primarily getting your news from waiters – it’s obviously a very different kind of life.

While self-help gurus come and go, the impulse to “escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich” never seems to wane. But, for me at least, the thought (and details) of actually succeeding serve more as a grim reminder of how much fun it is to solve real problems. Sure, there’s plenty of ways to live off the fat of the land in modern times, but isn’t it more fun to try and work in an area where the impact of creativity and hard work is important enough to persevere for more than four hours each week?