"Don't Take the Black Pill" by @andrewrk https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4
One of the best talks I have ever seen. Please watch it.
An antidote to all the despair about the world of computing I'm sure we all feel.
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Fundamentally, the problem isn't software, the problem is humanity. The problem is hierarchy. As he says, technology just enables society to do things. It's society that is fucked. Capitalism is fucked. The state is fucked. Technology becomes an amplifier of power, and those in power are fucked. It's not computers that are the problem, it's bosses, politicians, police forces, and concentrated coercive power.
I agree. But also this is the awareness long-raised. We all know this. Our timelines are full of us saying this every day.
Much as I liked @andrewrk talk, three quarters of it are awareness-raising, one quarter is the message of hope: Show the pathway where solutions are.
In our messages to others we should get to the opposite ratio, and talk three quarters about solutions. About can-do things, and ways in which people can chime in and participate. So that an energizing path follows awareness, a path of discovery on how our passions fit those of the next person we collaborate with. Solution orientation. Turn big problems into a challenge, a quest, an adventure. Undertaken collectively.
Awareness, discovery, activation, participation, proactive engagement, solutions. This is a process. Social experience design (SX) defines CALM culture, for Constructive activism-led movements. Where activist values become engrained in the works we create.
"To me this is completely missing the point, which is to pool effort in order to ensure that in general users of software remain in control of that software. To this end it doesn't really matter if your code gets picked up by AI companies. It primarily matters whether high quality free software is available to users providing competition that limits the degree to which proprietary software can get away with being coercive....
@cwebber @andrewrk
... If you refrain from participating in the software of the commons, the only thing that you're doing is surrendering more of our collective agency to abusive centralized powers." --Andrew Kelley
Fuck yes, can I get this on a billboard? On a flag? On a t-shirt... paint it on a fucking mural please...
Great talk. "We must believe that Humanity is generally good".
This is the premise of Social experience design (SX), in a quite holistic approach.
Scrolling my timeline this morning, like most mornings, I found the black pill, the doom and gloom we project to each other to tell about the state of apocalypse.
Our real bad actors are a tiny minority, but they win and keep winning, because we let them. The majority of us are common everyday people, sharing very similar basic needs. Have aspirations to lead a meaningful life. We want to be involved with positive, uplifting things, follow passions, unleash our creativity.
Software should serve that. Coding is social. We have to learn how to cocreate and create works that leave positive societal imprint. Joyful creation!
Fediverse is full of activists. Awareness-raising. But that's just the tip of the spear. We need pathways to solutions. The shaft gives impetus. We need only follow dreams.
@cwebber @andrewrk I've been learning Ukrainian for fun (fairly not useful to me, picked it because I learned some czech as a kid and wanted to learn a language that used cyrillic script; took years of Spanish, Japanese, Latin) and an unexpected side effect was making me happy at how great the internet is! Wiktionary: free high quality etymology info (& a free offline use phone app)?! So many online free / cheap resources from native speakers!
Very much appreciate your sharing. I'm way past my programming days, not quite so far past IT management consulting work, both as an independent and employee, most of it was very applicable.
I wasn't nearly as good at misdirection & secrecy as a W2 as I might have been, it probably dropped me into an early rather than later RIF wave in my last W2 stint, side benefit I got to do one more IT strategy engagement on my own.
I'll be sharing with my local Indivisible group...
One of the things I found nice from @andrewrk's talk was, finally, someone else hates A/B testing and says it!
But this really congealed for me in a way upon reflection of the talk: the reason I don't like A/B testing is it's like focus groups but for software
