Discipline makes Daring possible.

Software

Way back in the early 1980’s, when I decided to make the switch from modern languages to information technology, some people were astonished.  How could I possibly think I’d be any good at writing software?  I was a woman, and I didn’t have a maths, or even a numerate degree.  How dare I think of becoming a programmer?

My answer was simple “It’s the same skill isn’t it?  Translating from one language to another?  It’s just that in this case I’m translating from human to machine instead of human to human.”

I was good at it too (to the ongoing astonishment of some of my managers), because I realised early on that writing software isn’t just about translating from one language to another, it’s about translating ideas into action, and you can’t translate effectively if you don’t fully understand those ideas and the human desires that drive them.

It turns out that coding well isn’t about numbers at all.   It’s about people.  It’s about empathy.  It’s about logic.

In other words, it’s about being human.

Nobody has a monopoly on that.

Labour-saving

Slaves and servants enable the translation of my desires into someone else’s action.  I don’t have to actually do the work, but I can reap the benefit from it.  It always involves coercion of some kind – beatings, death, imprisonment, the threat of starvation.

Machines and software enable the translation of my desires into something else’s action.  I don’t have to actually do the work, and I can amplify the benefit from it.  This appears benign, but somewhere (often far away) coercion remains involved – for the people who make the machines or the software, or the machines behind the software, and the people who do the physical jobs hidden behind it, or controlled by it.

Teams, collaborations, co-operatives, movements – these enable translation of our shared desires into our shared action.  We do have to do the work, and there’s no reason we couldn’t build our own machines or software to amplify it because together, we share the benefits of it.

The only thing we have a right to from others, is the ability to ask for their help.  It’s up to us to put in the kind of effort that moves them to say ‘yes’.

Spring

I’d kind of forgotten about blackthorn blossom, until I took the car out for a last run on Monday.   It … Read More “Spring”

“XXX” Day

For me, the trouble with having a day, or a week, or a month on which we celebrate a particular group of people, or a particular relationship, or a particular sacrifice, is that doing so allows us to forget about these things for the rest of the year.

If these things really mattered to us, shouldn’t we be addressing the issues they raise every day?

Depression

Beck’s negative triad – or how people get (and stay) depressed.

Imagine what would happen if society fostered this process on purpose?

Consider the lilies of the fields…

“Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:  And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? … for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.“*

We don’t have to wait for God.  We could do it now, for each other.  There is plenty to go round.

Then people could just ‘do their thing’.

*King James Bible Matthew 26 – 32.