Think of the Warehouses

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

In one of those online discussions I wish I kept a link to, someone posed a comment along the lines of “Imagine how many warehouses we’d need to store the data we have if we didn’t have computers?” For a moment I thought that “yes, that’d take a lot of space” followed by me getting a lot more thoughtful.

I love a good exercise of “what if we didn’t have X/did X” even if it means contemplating the horror of a world without video games. So let’s imagine all the data we collect by computer today and if we had to store it and move it physically – with the occasional phone call to get someone to dig around in a box.

Think about all the data you have to fill out on the job and in your life, all the forms and orders and everything else. Imagine it if you had to do it on paper, file it store it, mail it. Quite a lot isn’t it? Imagine the nonexistent warehouses your employer and government would need.

Now, ask yourself why we collect all of that data, because you know what, I bet we don’t need it.

How many fields and forms do you fill out because the software is collecting data based on some default setting? Pay a bunch of money to a SaaS vendor, flip on all the settings, and go. There has to be a reason for all those fields, right? Why assume that? We’ve made it easy to collect data for no good reason or by accident.

Now imagine if all that unneeded data needed warehouses

In fact, on that subject, how much software and setup collects data “just in case” or “because someone asked?” Someone in a department that’s part of another department figured they might need the data. Someone else figured you add that extra field so they don’t get in trouble. Software gives us an amazing ability to create more work for ourselves fast.

More data. The imaginary warehouses get larger.

Then with all of this data we’re collecting that we don’t need and don’t want (and probably get wrong) there are going to be horrible errors. We’re going to have to hunt for information we forgot we didn’t need anyway. We’re going to loose data because we filled out that other form we didn’t need. That just generates more data to track down the errors in our data.

We’d need warehouses to store data about errors in our warehouses.

All of those above complaints/rants/notes also make it much harder to collect and store the actual data we need. We can’t even use the warehouses we have and they’re imaginary.

The purpose of this extended, self-indulgent metaphorical walk is to illustrate painfully a truth we’re all low-key aware of. We collect too much damn data we don’t need and it makes things worse. It’s so easy to get information, put in a web field, or scan a document that we rarely stop to ask if we need any of it or if it does any good.

Thinking about computing systems and asking “what if we had to store this physically” is a great way to find out how much we care.

I honestly wished such a metaphorical exercise wasn’t so useful – this is me, I like technology. We should be asking if we need data, if it’s hard to collect it, how much risks we’re creating by collecting all of this.

But if a physical example is needed, as I think it is these days, so be it.

Steven Savage

Dungeons, Dragons, The Internet, Simplicity

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’d like to discuss Dungeons and Dragons and the internet, and not just in the many incredibly nerdy ways I could. Dungeons and Dragons gives us an idea of the mechanics that could help make the internet useful again, as opposed to a bastion of advertising and bad comments.

Trust me on this.

So let’s talk Dungeons and Dragons, that game that pretty much launched Role-Playing Games as A Big Thing. It’s popular,and let us be honest, it’s terribly overcomplicated as befits something that originated in war games. I was there playing it in the 80s, and the critique has always been accurate.

Also I remember when a Paladin could roll a horse that was smarter than them.

A funny thing is Dungeons and Dragons and what it inspired also inspired wonderfully streamlined game systems. My favorite are the open-sourced Forged In The Dark system. The foundation Blades In the Dark showcases a streamlined system for a dark steampunk fantasy. The space adventure game Scum and Villainy combined various tropes, and made the inevitable starship a character. The game Wicked Ones inverted generic fantasy so people play monsters, and did everything from making a simple magic system to envisioning the messy idea of “followers” as “secondary characters.”

Forged In The Dark and it’s children got to the basics of what an RPG was, what people wanted, and made straightforward, playable games. If you haven’t checked out the system, do!

The thing is these streamlined, effective, precise games probably wouldn’t have existed without Dungeons and Dragons and its spinoffs. You needed complicated spell systems to realize “maybe this could be easier.” Complicated piles of various dice seem fun, but also lead one to wondering “could it just be six-sided dice?” Maybe you need levels, skills, saving throws, and so on to get the Forged In The Dark concept where characters are defined by “Actions” – general abilities like “Finesse” or “Science.”

Now the internet itself is terribly over complicated – and deliberately so to extract more income for various companies. It’s a simple thing that evolved to have layer and layer and layer on it, leaving us now in a world that’s called “Web 3.0.” But out of this overdone world maybe there’s a clue to what we actually want – we can learn from the pile of what we don’t want.

Mastodon is nice, and I am all for federation, but maybe Twitter was needed to give us ideas of what to do – and not do.. There’s a lovely Fediverse book review sharing program and video sharing, and so on. People are rediscovering RSS and even think of new ways to use it as the web drowns in crap. The excess gives us ideas, sometimes the idea is “maybe we shouldn’t have done that” – I mean there’s a reason I still send out a cut-and-paste-addresses email newsletter.

So for all the horrible stuff we’re dealing with, we can also ask what worked and what we wanted – and what we didn’t. We probably needed to ask that about ten years ago as a society, but at least we can do what we can now. We ask what we want, how to get it simply, and how to make it work for everyone.

It’s a bigger game to play, but we can find the best rules – and we can drop what we don’t need.

Steven Savage

Six Further Thoughts On Not Being Serious

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’m still processing my thoughts over Ted Giola’s post about how the US and maybe Western society isn’t serious anymore. It’s all watered down, performative, targeted, and just weirdly empty. When I posted my own blog post on the subject, my friends and readers had feedback. I figure I’d round that up – and these might become columns on their own.

So to reiterate, Giola felt our culture lacked seriousness, and I agreed – we’re doing things that aren’t what they say we are, in a performative existence. Combined with capitalism which rewards knowing how to Push The Money Button, and it’s a toxic mix.

So here’s a few things I wanted to explore after hearing from people:

Good Unseriousness: Is it always good to be serious, can’t we be funny or have fun? I’d say that you can be funny and serious (George Carlin, Terry Pratchett), and sometimes the best funny is one with a grounding that is serious and all-too real. I’d also add that FUN might not be serious but it’s also not a lack of seriousness – what Giola targets is a deliberate unseriousness.

Lack of Agency: How often do we lack Agency, so why be serious in the first place? This is a fascinating thought because I “get it” instinctively – and I think there’s something true here. If you feel helpless, all the “serious people” are screwing around and lying, does anything matter? Then you end up with a kind of toxic, spreading, unseriousness.

Curation: We’re not trained in curating, checking facts, and so on. This leaves us to an onslaught of bullshit from politicians, mediocre media, and more. Even if we want to deal with things seriously, it’s hard to sort it out – and exhausting. Which leads to Lack of Agency . . .

Speed: Our culture and time move so fast that it’s hard to keep up with anything. We’ve not just got a lot of media and news, it’s all coming fast. It’s easy to get caught up in something unserious, it keeps us from cultivating, and maybe at some point we just give up. It’s also hard to pay attention to what’s right in front of us.

Misuse of Unseriousness: We’re also used to a very bullying culture that chides people for not being able to take jokes that are just disguised abuse. “Can’t you take a joke” is endemic in our culture, and horrible things can be both serious and not at the same time. This just distorts what’s serious and not – and maybe even the manipulators aren’t sure anymore. The Serious and Unserious become harder to separate.

Fear: This is a conclusion of my own – unseriousness for all its problems also can be due to fear. People are afraid to confront our climate issues. A second generation millionaire faces the fact they might only be there due to birth, not any skill. Politics is insanely complex. Confronting the world we live in is hard and unseriousness is both a tool to cover up your failings but also a possible reaction. Many a political figure has a crackling fear running beneath their worlds, you can feel it, but it seems they can’t.

So those are a few thoughts from some great dialog with friends and readers – and hopefully food for thought for you. I honestly do think we’re in a crisis of seriousness in the world, and its making everything worse. But it’s not as simple as it may seem, so exploring it, well, is serious business.

Steven Savage