Humanist IT: How to get unstuck
The way back into humanist IT is both incredible simple and incredibly complex, and it is almost the same phrase.
Understand the domain. In other words, understand the context; reach for the yes-and that adds nodes to transform, not just a heightened expression of what’s already there. Make a bet, experiment, and see what finds traction without resorting to pressure, hype, and false choices.
The hard part is understanding domains. When we scope a problem to solve, we are trying to wrap our heads around a finite set within a perceptually infinity. We do that by picking out a border, restructuring the information — with bets — and seeing if, how, and how-well it works. That’s information structure, and it can be a complex beast.
Information is also entirely human. All the human characteristics and/or behaviors that so many of us have decided need to be shamed, or denigrated, or dismissed, or non-existent to perception still affects our information. All the manipulation that some of us do so well, and others of us are copying in hopes to increase some facet of sensed success, still affects our information. All the points of dissonance, some real and debilitating and some sensed and used as reason for a manipulative power play and an excuse for aggression, still affects our information. All of our ability to love, find connection, and to work together, fix and build — it’s all in our information.
And all of that — all of the complex structure, all of the humanity — are in time. What we “know” now is not what we’ll always understand as meaningful. What we have understood can follow us for ages, when there is some delightfully prescient nugget of encapsulated meaning. We work together for a sensed future, fix what doesn’t work, build more, and keep the food growing and the lights on. Especially if the things we depend on aren’t functioning well in the overall system, we need to understand them and shift — not go hungry or make electricity a luxury. None of these are throw-away functions; all of the people focused on any of our continued existence should be honored. Right now we don’t, and it’s pervasive.
All of this functions more fluidly, with less pain, when we understand the information as close to reality as we can currently conceptualize.
We bring it all back in closer alignment with reality by reformulating information to be humanist; in our policies, in our laws, in our information, and in our tools.
