Yes, I am talking about computer programs. Computing languages are like all languages, they can be used to write a Romeo and Juliet or a Mien Kampf. The difference lies entirely in the motives of the writer. In the case of the computer program – in the motives of those who order the program written.
Wait a minute – computer programs aren’t fascist – they just make things work. Payrolls get paid, Invoices get sent out, Inventories get tallied, transports get routed, work gets outsourced…….what’s fascistic about that?
Computer programs can enhance what people do, make easy what people struggle to do or they can take away what people do. This little difference is what tells us whether the computer program serves the dark side of the force or not.
When computer programs add value – they do so by doing something that people cannot do for themselves, either easily or perhaps not at all.
When computer programs extract value – they do so by making a virtue where no virtue is inherent and / or by hi-jacking a transaction so that it now serves to exploit rather than enhance.
Faster, Cheaper, Better! We have been imbued with this mantra to the point where we all ascribe an inherent inescapable value to it without ever asking whether there is truly value there or not.
In another of my blogs I have spoken of the treachery of cheaper. So let me focus here then on the emptiness of faster! Exactly who took a survey and figured out the everybody wanted everything faster. In everywhere and everything we are touted the wondrous virtues of faster. We get our bills faster, we can pay faster, we can send applications faster, we can find everything faster except, for example, the answer to the question – what are we looking for and why?
Some things are indeed better faster – being able to respond to a failing heart for example. And that is the kind of program that falls into the category; enhances and does something people cannot do. But most of the other things that are now faster – sit down for a moment and ask yourself exactly what dire thing would happen if they happened a bit slower.
When we can claim that by doing / making something faster we have enhanced a person or made it possible for him / her to do what she could not do before – then faster indeed brings some value with it. But when all it does is allow the program owner to divert some value from the interaction without giving anything in return then this program has done nothing. I leave it to you to brush aside the layers of spin and hype that make us believe that all kinds of faster and accessories of faster are imperative necessities - and see for yourselves what you truly need faster and what you don’t.
I will just ask the question that if you and I are not the ones really getting anything out of this faster mania – then who is? And why? After all people do not invest in these programs just for the hell of it. They’re not cheap!
First of all most things that are being made faster are economic in nature and strangely enough there is an odd one sidedness to the things that are being made faster. I would like to get paid faster – say in hourly installments? – but no one has come up with a program like that. I still get paid twice month just as when cash was actually disbursed in offices two times a month, or when checks were sent home two times a months or now when they are direct deposited two times a month. I would like my bank interest to be credited to my account real-time. I would like the dividends from my investments to be given to me everyday. But sadly none of these are available faster. You see, he who owns the program gets to decide what gets faster…… not he who wants or needs something faster. Ladies and gentlemen the only thing that is happening is that we are getting jacked faster!
And now that we know that let’s put the two of the three together: Cheaper is certainly not of any value to us (see earlier blogs) and as we now see neither is Faster. How then can the two together be Better? That, my friends is the Deception!
And when a language is used to perpetrate a Deception it is a part of a Fascist Program!
