Mastodawn

Ruth — of systems & design Aug 25, 2024

Contempt serves to self-elevate by denigrating. It is a classic power-over kind of move, for it takes personal power from.

Still. The importance of “glue people” might be better understood if we used a word that connotes cohesion rather than adhesion??

Dawn Ahukanna

@RuthMalan
This is contempt & monolithic, colonial exploitation mentality-monopolize political power & hold conquered societies/ppl as inferior.
I assume he is working 25 hours a day (he somehow bent time & added the extra hour), does not eat, does not sleep or do any commercially “useless” activity.
Calling people “glue” is such reductionist and linear thinking about human adaptability.
Life of living, breathing beings is like a kaleidoscope with many perspectives, not a one-eyed monocle.

Dawn Ahukanna Sep 11, 2024

@RuthMalan
A decade & half of random, entropic activity missing the bullseye target is what happens when there’s no cohesion in thought, only executing action-“working together was such a foreign concept that management had to bribe every individual employee”-https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
See Google graveyard-https://killedbygoogle.com/
There’s a reason why speed of decision making & not only speed of execution is relevant- “Wave (insert product name) has not seen the ‘user adoption’ we would have liked."

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.

Ars Technica

@dahukanna [exclamations redacted!] “working together was such a foreign concept that management had to bribe every individual employee” !!!! [exclaims further!!] (i know that big orgs can sometimes have microcultures created by managers who are managing to hold a different organizational space for their group, but still … that is … wow….)

@dahukanna @RuthMalan not the point but i loved wave :(

@hipsterelectron @dahukanna same! Had such hopes!

Dawn Ahukanna Sep 11, 2024

@RuthMalan @hipsterelectron

Me three! It was a communication cockpit & like all socio-technical devices e.g. cars, mobile phones, etc. needs to:
a.)teach the necessary cognitive + bio-mechanical skills & provide training materials e.g. driving lessons for cars (wave) as no one is born knowing how to drive. It’s an acquired skill.
&
b.)be designed keeping human intuition & existing practices in mind. Why & how do people use their existing communication tools? What need is the tool addressing?

@dahukanna @RuthMalan cc @impactology

@dahukanna oh!!! That is a huge insight (i wasn’t seeing) — thank you! Undercutting the informal communication pathways and (org) cultural cohesion makers for power — oof!

@dahukanna @RuthMalan part of the reason this framing really hurts me is that a very close friend who i worked on research together with was exactly just such a glue employee at google and was roundly considered one of the most empathetic humans by so many and recently passed from an illness and i wonder (not too often or it hurts too much) to what extent this contempt for glue was responsible for his death

@hipsterelectron @dahukanna 💔💔💔