Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World

https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2019/04/29/software-the-tough-tomato-principle-and-the-great-weirdening-of-the-world/

by patadune • 7 years ago

122 28 7 years ago

florentcrivello.com

jacobush• 7 years ago

Tough Tomate principle is a new (to me) take on how the tools and the product shape each other, but it reminded me of this gem: https://dourish.com/publications/2012/ubicomp2012-colonial.p...

Ubicomp’s Colonial Impulse

bungie4• 7 years ago

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail principle. Come on admit, you've hammered in a screw before.

Good easy read though.

FreeFull• 7 years ago

I'm reading it more as "If the only tool everyone has is hammers, everything will be done with nails"

beat• 7 years ago

And screws will be refined to lose those hard-to-hammer threads and that unreliable taper.

stcredzero4• 7 years ago

Come on admit, you've hammered in a screw before

Nope. Never. I take "everything" to be an exaggeration for effect. I've only hammered in peg-like or nail-like objects.

I will totally admit to pliering in a screw, however.

mc322• 7 years ago

I do, sometimes, to get them started specially into hard wood (not necessarily hardwood), from there a driver will take over.

jondubois• 7 years ago

> One instance of the Tough Tomato Principle is particularly interesting: when people are the tomatoes that have to fit their new technological paradigm.

Sounds like a lot of people are going to be thrown out.

stcredzero4• 7 years ago

No. People are going to change to adapt to the new environment:

Taste and nutritional quality were secondary to machine compatibility.

(Read "nutritional" in the sense that Harvey Keitel means it with regards to people. Or was that Michael Caine?)

bartimus• 7 years ago

People are going to change to adapt to the new environment

We'll just be doing whatever the AI tells us to do.

melks• 7 years ago

This, although a little different, reminded me of Conway's Law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

tschellenbach• 7 years ago

The name for this is co-evolution (though tough tomato sounds fun as well :D). It's been written about extensively in papers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coevolution

eternalban• 7 years ago

Co-evolution in biological systems is based on evolving organisms. There is a broken symmetry here (though personally I find the notion of 'artificial' constraints affecting the space of possible actions rather too dull to get excited about) in that we are considering changes in two categorically distinct mechanisms and organisms.

In fact, imo, what is actually interesting are the specific cases instances of the dull fact, such as of language and thought/expression. And btw, would you consider that specific case "co-evolution"? Is it really a linear history?)

Animats• 7 years ago

People have been grumbling about that since the invention of fences.

spir• 7 years ago

  The Valley of Mismatch
  The Tough Tomato Principle is not a mere side effect of innovation.
  It’s necessary for the new technology to express its full potential.
  You can’t use your shiny new tomato harvester until you’ve got the
  tomato that goes with it.

We're seeing a lot of this in blockchain.

exelius• 7 years ago

The problem with blockchain is that a significant percentage of people who are bullish on blockchain are only bullish because they think it will negate the need for governance.

They fail to see that many systems they want to replace with blockchain only exist because of the need for governance. The governance came first, then we designed a system around the rules we needed.

SideburnsOfDoom• 7 years ago

This is an old one:

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us"

https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/we-shape-our-...

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/26/shape/

l33tbro• 7 years ago

removing gatekeepers means you don’t need to run your idea through a dozen filters before showing it to its final consumer. People get the uncut stuff directly — in all its glorious weirdness.

Isn't the goal to be build systems where users are able to modify and optimize the gatekeeper in the fairest way to their collective needs? The assumption that all gatekeepers are bad just feels so undergraduate at this point.

To be honest, this whole post reads like an updated version of a 'the web is going to be so neat guys' / cyber-utopian rant from 1993. If the last 5 years are teaching us anything, it's that being able to 'run your idea through a dozen filters' may not be such a bad thing.

CodeMage• 7 years ago

To be honest, this whole post reads like an updated version of a 'the web is going to be so neat guys' / cyber-utopian rant from 1993

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had that reaction. Don't get me wrong, I liked the first half of the article a lot. The exploration and discussion of coevolution principle in technology was very interesting. But the way the "software revolution" was described is extremely naive. The following are some points that stood out.

And of course, that communication is free and instantaneous regardless of its distance.

No, it isn't. It might be near-instantaneous in best case, but it sure as hell isn't free.

The gig economy worker and the digital nomad are two examples of lifestyles that are native to this new paradigm. Each just has to press a button to start making money. Each works when and from wherever they want. And each gets paid in direct proportion to their output.

This totally ignores the plethora of very real and very nasty issues plaguing the gig economy.

In practice, it means the factory no longer needs to run as slow as its slowest gear. Each gear can spin as fast as it fancies, and be rewarded according to it.

That's not how things work out in practice. The "gears" don't "spin" in isolation, so the "slowest gear" still affects the whole "factory". Worse, the competitive nature of our society turns this whole scenario into a race to the bottom.

Some will say that this measurability also comes at the cost of our privacy. But you rarely need your government-issued ID to do things online — something less true of the physical world. Software is anonymous by default.

Do we live in the same world? Sure, software itself is conceptually uninterested in identity -- which isn't the same thing as being anonymous -- but I think we've all had plenty of evidence demonstrating how software facilitates erosion of privacy.

You may not need to ask for permission to distribute your content anymore, but you do need permission to get paid. If the payment gatekeepers don’t like you, you’re outta luck.

Again, this is simplistic and naive. Cryptocurrencies cannot magically abstract away the real world. The "payment gatekeepers" are not just banks and credit card companies. There's also your government and your client's government and all the stuff that comes with them.

In short, while I agree we should be excited about technology, we really have to do a much better job of making sure it helps us.

DennisP2• 7 years ago

I've spent a fair amount of time reading terms of service for various payment providers. They restrict a lot more than the government does.

DennisP2• 7 years ago

Personally I preferred the weird '90s to the FAANG-everywhere blandness we have today. And I'm having a hard time imagining how we're supposed to "modify and optimize" those gatekeepers.

otakucode• 7 years ago

I don't know if I can agree with the notion that software is bringing more flexibility. Software and other computer-based systems breed a type of 'systems thinking' which is very efficient and rule-based. And reality is neither efficient or rule-based. If the software doesn't have a field to enter the correct data, how do people react? Do they conclude the software is wrong? No, they conclude the person is wrong and must be fit to the system provided. Software systems are often very general, and they achieve this by ignoring the complexities and specificities of individual situations.

Software makes it almost impossibly tempting to reduce human situations to factors and linear approximations. While these may often work well enough, they also fail often enough to cause trouble. Hundreds of years ago, a work was written which I believe was quoted by Donald Knuth in one of his books that I've never forgotten: "Make game of that which makes as much of thee." That, to me, sound like the most cogent advice to anyone living in the modern world. If you are seen as a factor to be manipulated, maximized, or reduced, it is only fitting, appropriate, and ultimately, moral, for you to respond in kind.

icebraining• 7 years ago

Bureaucracy was doing that way before software came along, and I'm not sure the former was easier to subvert than the latter.

mercer• 7 years ago

It's much easier, through software and the internet, for bureaucracy, or in a broader sense 'systems thinking', to extend its reach to every little part of life that used to be exempt or less affected in the past because of various constraints.

I do realize that the statement is a bit vague, and I'm not saying it's necessary development, but at least in my experience it seems to be true, in all sorts of ways.

There's the ability to measure and optimize things in ways never possible before: tickets processed, karma, time to respond to a chat or email, etc. And if it's possible and easy, why not do so when you're the one in charge?

Or ubiquitous communication channels, unbounded by time or place. It takes conscious effort/willpower to disconnect, and isn't always possible (at least not without negative consequences including social 'punishment').

There's a growing problem in the (mental) health care industry here, as I understand it, because doctors, psychologists, and social workers find themselves overwhelmed with 'paperwork' at the expense of doing their actual job, all because the various bureaucracies want measurements: insurance companies, the government, the CEO.

And it's not just that it takes time, it actually changes the way these people have to work. I've spoken to a number of social workers and psychologists who lament the fact that they can't build up any kind of relationship with their patients (err, "clients") because the 'system' actively reduces them to rows in a database and if 'a' then 'b' approaches, where personal connection (and ability to, at times, use human judgment) is significantly reduced.

I've heard the same is true with police work. Because of 'algorithmic' solutions (a whole other can of works) the 'beat cops' are told by computers, basically, where to patrol. As a self-fulfilling prophecy, their increased presence in certain areas increases the measured crime, which in turn affects the algorithm. This obviously doesn't just reduce the ability of cops to use their fuzzy human judgment to go where they think it makes sense, but it actually pollutes crime data which might, for example, mark certain areas (and ethnicities?) as more criminal.

To end my ramble, I'm not saying all of this is bad. I'm still a bit of a techno-utopian at heart, and I think removing human judgment can also be beneficial (especially when it comes to power dynamics). But it worries me to the rather rapid increase in our abilities, and the way we just seem to jump head-first into this new world without some very careful investigation.

And I definitely think a lot of this was a lot harder to do before software came along, and generally a lot harder to subvert.

rossdavidh• 7 years ago

So, I'm a software developer, so it's not like I'm against software. I also work remote, and it's fine. But...

Sometimes you need to remove a restriction, in order to find out why that restriction was important. It's like if gravity goes away (https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/end_of_gr...), and you discover you were depending on gravity to do a lot of things for you, even though it was a drag when you have to get up in the morning.

The Great Weirdening that the author discusses, is not unrelated to the fact that every little pocket of greed, hatred, or delusion can reinforce itself online. Also, that one nation after another finds that it has no consensus anymore, no political center of gravity to use for keeping it together. And if you can't get to consensus by talking, eventually, you get to it by violence. I'm not sure the Great Weirdening is going to be all that good. It may be that having colocated physical spaces and shared media helped us learn to get along with people that aren't like us, and it may be that is a difficult but important skill to have.

Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World

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