Every codebase eventually grows technical debt. Requirements change, things that used to make sense no longer don’t. People who came up with them aren’t around anymore.
When tech people say our world isn’t deeply messed up, I’m confused. It’s the biggest legacy system out there.
When tech people say our world isn’t deeply messed up, I’m confused. It’s the biggest legacy system out there.
This piece is spot-on. So many harms of today trace back to stupid ideas from hundreds of years ago. Even if most people aren’t that violent, these ideas of “purity” and “modesty” and “shame” are ingrained in our societies. We get so used we don’t notice. religiondispatches.org/dont-discount-…
The same goes for “meritocracy” or capitalism. If you found a way to live within that system, and the system didn’t break you, it is tempting to think of it as a law of nature. Like gravity. But if you wouldn’t risk swapping places with someone else, are you sure that it works?
I feel a tinge of unease even mentioning capitalism. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, right? Also, it’s not like I’ve researched this and have better ideas. Coming from a post-Soviet country, I’m equally uneasy seeing some people romanticize USSR (which sucked massive ass).
Of course, that the way forward has to lie between two binary choices du jour is another stupid idea that is so pervasive that at some point it is easier to just stop noticing it.
I want to highlight this point because the analogy in my original tweet is itself an example of a flawed foundation. Like tech bros thinking they can just “refactor” some part of the society is a big part of the problem.
https://twitter.com/floydophone/status/1373326714936303617
Growing up while my family was rapidly moving out of poverty into upper middle class made me not question the system much. And I see that attitude a lot in tech sphere: “everything worked for me so it’s probably not too bad”. It’s very naïve but otherwise logical people miss it.
Society is a lot more complex than tech. But if you already know how broken the tech is, you should expect the society to be a lot more broken. We can’t see all the brokenness from our own standpoints. This is why we need to listen to other people’s experiences. And believe them.
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