We need to become literate with software
In my first book, I talked a little about how people parse technology. Fifteen years later, I think people still pay attention to technology, but they do so relatively unthinkingly – because it’s always there, always around us, and everything within it is aggressively vying for our attention.
As a result, most people have become lousy at critiquing software.
They deal with software. They dismiss popovers instantaneously. They notice an ad and swipe without thinking. They put zero brain cells into their work with technology, and they know when something is busted.
But they don’t talk about it, and they also seldom abandon it.
We’ve become illiterate at reading software.
In this post by writer Tara McMullin, she appears to agree:
Do you see your software?
Do you see how it influences how you run meetings, brainstorm ideas, fulfill your responsibilities, and communicate with others? Do you see how its text boxes, radio buttons, tabs, search results, and menus train you to think? Do you see it, or do you just use it?
I think most people “just use it.” And more people need to get conscious to what people making software are trying to do to us.
We should be holding the creators of software accountable for what they make & do – including me. You should be checking my work. You should be checking everyone’s work, and then you should be demanding better of it. You should be calling out every single situation where someone tries to hijack your attention, throw a modal in front of you, or destabilize democracy.
Right now, we do none of this. McMullin again:
If we want to experience the positive impacts of software more often and resist its harmful ones, then we need to see it. We must be consciously aware of what it enables and what it disables. We must be intentional about the norms we establish with its use. Most importantly, we need to ask what's best for us and the people we work with before we consider software and its features.
This universally correct paragraph implies a basic hygiene around, and consumer education towards, the practice of relating to software.
I recently got invited to an event, and the invite asked me to sign up for a platform before I got the address. Instead of blindly signing up, I looked up the platform’s history and discovered that it was an unmonetized non-business from a guy who made a ton of money off of selling his first thing. Now he is now hoovering up VC capital from fascists.
So I texted my friend to get the address instead. It was worth the light lift – because we should all demand better. Or we end up with all of this.