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*'''It’s prone to [[obsolescence]]''': The future, as imagined by the [[thought leader]]s of the [[reg tech]], was forged in the ''now'', which tomorrow will be the ''past''. Just as previously imagined futures from the past have proven — flying cars, off-world replicants, the colonisation of Mars, the [[singularity]], [[A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Book Review|a world without work]] — predicting the future was, and remains, ''hard''. The answer is not to try: to leave the architecture open to users to imagine as they go. No-one predicted SETI@home, after all.<ref>The internet was revolutionary because it imagined ''no'' future, but left that — and continues to leave it, right? — to users. By the way, [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC] is a bit of a clue to where this is all going.</ref> But “leaving everything to the user” doesn’t leave a [[rentier capitalist]] much to do, so rent-seeking businesses constrain their businesses, requiring paid-for development, and consigning themselves to ultimate [[obsolescence]]. | *'''It’s prone to [[obsolescence]]''': The future, as imagined by the [[thought leader]]s of the [[reg tech]], was forged in the ''now'', which tomorrow will be the ''past''. Just as previously imagined futures from the past have proven — flying cars, off-world replicants, the colonisation of Mars, the [[singularity]], [[A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Book Review|a world without work]] — predicting the future was, and remains, ''hard''. The answer is not to try: to leave the architecture open to users to imagine as they go. No-one predicted SETI@home, after all.<ref>The internet was revolutionary because it imagined ''no'' future, but left that — and continues to leave it, right? — to users. By the way, [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC] is a bit of a clue to where this is all going.</ref> But “leaving everything to the user” doesn’t leave a [[rentier capitalist]] much to do, so rent-seeking businesses constrain their businesses, requiring paid-for development, and consigning themselves to ultimate [[obsolescence]]. | ||
*'''It’s prone to competition''': To treat what should be a ''utility'' as a ''profit opportunity'' exposes you to another source of obsolescence. ''Competition''. How can you know ''your'' platform will be ''the'' platform? How do you keep that position once you’ve got it? ''Friends Reunited'' ring a bell? | *'''It’s prone to competition''': To treat what should be a ''utility'' as a ''profit opportunity'' exposes you to another source of obsolescence. ''Competition''. How can you know ''your'' platform will be ''the'' platform? How do you keep that position once you’ve got it? ''Friends Reunited'' ring a bell? | ||
==The problem== | ==The problem== | ||
===[[Rent-seeking]]=== | ===[[Rent-seeking]]=== | ||
We’re yet to find a [[reg tech]] provider whose business model does not involve ''extracting [[rent]]''. This they commonly justify by reference to the ''value'' their product provides, which they equate to the ''total cost of labour and infrastructure it saves | We’re yet to find a [[reg tech]] provider whose business model does not involve ''extracting [[rent]]''. This they commonly justify by reference to the ''value'' their product provides, which they equate to the ''total cost of labour and infrastructure'' it saves. Historians, and those who enjoy irony, will notice how, in equating the value of a service to the net amount of labour it requires — or in this case “saves”, this resembles the [[labour theory of value]]. | ||
You might ask how | You might ask how a vendor could know. You might also wonder what there is to gain by cutting the wage bill of some school-leavers in Bucharest, if you pay most of what you save away again, to a start-up in Old Street which bought some code from some school-leavers in Bucharest. Especially if that vendor will then be able to intermediate your process for the hereafter, adding the cheerful chime of a clipped ticket each time his machine spits out another document, or while your stuff collects dust on his server.<ref>This is called “hosting” and it seems to be a cash cow. But aren’t terabytes of data storage, like, ''pennies'' these days?</ref> | ||
Wasn’t the promise of the [[Information technology|information revolution]] ''grander'' than that? Weren’t things meant to be ''free'', not just ''marginally cheaper but a lot more complicated''? | |||
===[[Iatrogenic|The cure and the disease]]=== | ===[[Iatrogenic|The cure and the disease]]=== | ||
'''''[[Iatrogenic]]''''' — it is a cure that is worse than the disease<ref>This is a super concept and if you haven’t come across it you owe it to yourself and {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} to read about it in his superbly bombastic {{br|Incerto}} series.</ref> — in that in promising to ''alleviate'' the [[tedium]] of | '''''[[Iatrogenic]]''''' — it is a cure that is worse than the disease<ref>This is a super concept and if you haven’t come across it you owe it to yourself and {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} to read about it in his superbly bombastic {{br|Incerto}} series.</ref> — in that in promising to ''alleviate'' the [[tedium]] of all that [[boilerplate]] — all the pernickitiness and the low-level wrangling over [[representations and warranties]] — technology throws open the window on a world of exactly that kind of low-level tinkering. The cost of pedantry has ''plummeted''. | ||
In the olden days, the [[Anal paradox|anality]] of contracts was bounded by any lawyer’s natural capacity — deep, to be sure, but ultimately finite — to hold a superstructure of piecemeal salutary conditionality in her head. Nowadays, | In the olden days, the [[Anal paradox|anality]] of contracts was bounded by any lawyer’s natural capacity — deep, to be sure, but ultimately finite — to hold a superstructure of piecemeal salutary conditionality in her head. Nowadays, [[contract]]s can be infinitely, infinitesimally varied and endlessly customised. One can cater for any [[Pedantry|predilection]], whim, [[For the avoidance of doubt|doubt]] or [[proviso]]. We can put one in every line, if that is our wish. We can command that a space between words must be, or not be, ''italic''.<ref>When the great [[J. M. F. Biggs]] first isolated and documented a [[Biggs hoson]] in the wild — the celebrated [[bold full stop]] in a “Boats” [[repackaging]] — it was a once-in-a-generation event.</ref> | ||
This should not be a surprise. The word-processor did not ''shorten'' legal discourse. [[Email]] did not truncate | This should not be a surprise. The word-processor did not ''shorten'' legal discourse. [[Email]] did not truncate communication. When Andy gaveth, it was not Bill, but ''our yen for verbal diarrhoea'' that tooketh away. | ||
[[Technology]] promised a revolution but appealed to our basest instincts. [[Technology]] made contracts ''worse''. What reason is there to think it will suddenly stop now? | [[Technology]] promised a revolution but appealed to our basest instincts. [[Technology]] made contracts ''worse''. What reason is there to think it will suddenly stop now? | ||
It won’t if the [[reg tech]] [[Rent-seeker|rent-seekers]] have any say in it. Note the misalignment of interests: vendors have a direct incentive — in fact, a ''need'' — not just to fix, but to ''continue'' “fixing”, because “fixing” is how they get paid. They design their disintermediating machines to only disintermediate ''so far'': users must remain dependent enough on their code, their systems and their expertise, that they have to pay an annuity for it. To pay ''[[rent]]''.<ref>I have lost count of the times that that a tech provider has told me users cannot have edit or configuration rights on a piece of software. There are two explanations for this, and neither is edifying: one is that the software is so fragile or poorly designed that allowing a user to tinker with it will make it break; another is that it is so basic that allowing users to see it will reveal how simple it really is.</ref> | It won’t, if the [[reg tech]] [[Rent-seeker|rent-seekers]] have any say in it. Note the misalignment of interests: vendors have a direct incentive — in fact, a ''need'' — not just to fix, but to ''continue'' “fixing”, because “fixing” is how they get paid. They design their disintermediating machines to only disintermediate ''so far'': users must remain dependent enough on their code, their systems and their expertise, that they have to pay an annuity for it. To pay ''[[rent]]''.<ref>I have lost count of the times that that a tech provider has told me users cannot have edit or configuration rights on a piece of software. There are two explanations for this, and neither is edifying: one is that the software is so fragile or poorly designed that allowing a user to tinker with it will make it break; another is that it is so basic that allowing users to see it will reveal how simple it really is.</ref> | ||
===The fault in our stars=== | ===The fault in our stars=== | ||
Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — yes, even [[legal]] — without ever asking ''whether the process was all that important in the first place''. | Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — yes, even [[legal]] — without ever asking ''whether the process was all that important in the first place''. | ||