Jobsworthism

Office anthropology™ →Go uptown →intro →prem →sa The JC puts on his pith-helmet, grabs his butterfly net and a rucksack full of marmalade sandwiches, and heads into the concrete jungleIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Work anthropology Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

The JC complains a lot about the modern world’s obsession with technology and reducing everything to data.

The data modernism rap-sheet

Data modernism’s rap-sheet is long.

It is historical: finite, and blind to the unfolding possibilities of an infinite universe.

It cuts corners: it relies on scale to deliver averagarian solutions to suit the majority, and cares less about outliers, edge cases and odd-bods (sorry, all you people at the margins, you are just not worth our lazy while).

It is disingenuous: it sells a better, faster, more effective service while delivering a poorer, less flexible one. It is thereby premium mediocre: it sells the appearance of quality, with none of its cost.

It depersonalises: because it works best when consumers fall easily into broad, simple categories, it incentivises consumers to identify themselves in broad, simple categories, and as such polarises and tribalises the market.

It infantilises: In its push for consumers to articulate themselves by reference to its simplified categories, it reduces consumers to their broad, basic, emotional issues.

Boy, that all just came out in one great big gush. That wasn’t even the point of this article. But there it is: is it any wonder we are are in the state we are?

The JC claims no great conspiracy, by the way, nor a small one. He does not seek some great reforming social manifesto. He does not calls for an uprising to kick back against the overlords. For these are simple system effects. They are bound to happen, to some degree, without mendacity, where the incentives are set up in a certain way.

This is how complex systems will work where there is the means to reap the easy benefits of automation. We have always taken the benefits of technology, and always given away peripheral qualities. This is bound to happen in an evolving market. Those who don't follow suit will die, unless they can contrive a new way of thriving.

There is scope for playing at the edges of thundering herd — going off piste, playing in the rich and uninterrupted back country. The rewards there are colossal — but so are the risks: tree-wells, cliffs, avalanches — and there is no ski patrol. If you go over, you are on your own. so you have to ne good at what you do. No corner-cutting or infantilising for you.

What has changed is our capacity for automation. It is exponentially greater than it was a generation ago. It feels exponentially greater than it was a year ago.

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See also

• Jobsworth’s charter
• Off piste
• Pareto triage