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About Tweeting December 6, 2019

Posted by Peter Varhol in Software platforms, Technology and Culture.
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I’ve done a presentation generically entitled “Talking to People: The Forgotten Software Tool.”  The time I gave it at DevOps Days Berlin 2016 was probably the closest I’ve ever come to getting a standing ovation.  The thesis of the talk, based in part on MIT’s Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation is that we as a society are increasingly preferring digital means of communications to physical ones.  For generations raised with smartphones, tablets, and (legacy) computers, face to face communications can be a struggle.

I am not a digital native in broadcasting my thoughts and activities to the rest of the world.  I have held jobs where tweeting, for example, was a job requirement in order to help build the company brand or get more page views.  I did so, even willingly, but my efforts were not nearly as voluminous as some of my colleagues.

I have to remember to tweet, or blog.  While I tend to be an introverted person throughout my life, decades ago I reluctantly recognized the need to reach out to others.  At the time, all of that was face to face, because digital connections didn’t exist.

Now there are so many ways to communicate without looking at someone.  I’ve had a number of video calls lately using Zoom, often with people who are using dual monitors.  They have the video showing on the large screen to one side, and look at that screen, and seemingly away from me.  It was funny, once I realized what was happening.

By itself, that’s not a bad thing, and in fact those with dual screens may not even realize they’re not really looking at you.  But it does damage the trust you try to build up by looking someone in the eye, and reading their nonverbal communications, is degraded even further with many digital forms of communications.

And tweeting is one of them.  And because we don’t know many (if at all) of the people who are reading our tweets, and don’t have to look them in the eye, we don’t feel obliged to be respectful (like many of Elon Musk’s more bizarre tweets).  That’s true even for those of us whose tweets are almost entirely professional.

Speech is not free.  We pay for it with everything we say.  Our reputations, the trust other people have in us, our ability to communicate effectively, and even to the point of lawsuits, are dependent upon not using Twitter as an attack platform.

Okay, here’s my solution.  Twitter needs to be banned from normal discourse.  In fact, Twitter is without normal discourse.  It should be entirely a professional platform.  I realize that this isn’t going to happen, but Twitter is too dangerous to our means of communication to simply dismiss.

I Want to See Things I Disagree With December 8, 2016

Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.
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This article on Quartz is disheartening on many levels.  What first got my attention is its point that the new Amazon grocery store is specifically designed to avoid interactions with random people.

And then it goes on to talk about how the Facebook algorithms tailor our news based on how we define ourselves. (It most definitely doesn’t define mine; I refuse to join Facebook).  It gives us only what it thinks we want to read.

It is a thesis similar to Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.  We avoid conversation with friends, family, and random people during the day because they are unpredictable.  At a deeper level, they may force us to consider other ideas, which is also disruptive to our daily lives.

It turns out that we don’t particularly like other ideas, that don’t conform to our current belief network. We want reinforcement of what we already believe, because it is easier for us.  We don’t want the friction of having to think about ideas opposed to our existing belief networks.  We call that friction, and we are attempting to minimize or even eliminate friction in our lives.

Dammit, I want friction in my life. I want to put a few bucks in the pot next to the bell-ringing Salvation Army Santa, and tell him he does good work, and hear what he says.  I want to make a random remark to a random person, just to hear the response.  And dammit, I don’t want to be told what I want to read, and I resent an algorithm that tries to tell me otherwise.  Why doesn’t anyone else?

My belief network has changed substantially as an adult. If yours hasn’t, then you have a real problem.

And I am not a particularly social person. In my late middle age (at least), I remain uncomfortable in group situations where I don’t know anyone.  But this is what it means to be a human being, in a human society.  We should be uncomfortable, because we grow as a result.

Kudos for Mike Murphy for writing this.

And. I realize that I am getting more strident in my late middle age.  I don’t know that I am right, in all or in part.  But I am willing to lay it out there, and listen to people who might prove me wrong.  And that seems to be more than just about any of us are willing to do right now.