Culture

But What If It Wasn’t Worth It?

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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)

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, a friend once said she didn’t think any tech “innovation” in the last 15 years was worth it overall. Admittedly considering some of the innovations are supermassive web frameworks and electric vehicles that inadvertently catch fire, I sorta get that. But this brings up a larger question.

What is it we’re used to today that actually isn’t worth it?

This makes me think of my interest in Chinese history and philosophy. Watching Taoists and Confucians discuss good government, it was in context of feudalism, so it was “what if we feudalismed right?” Like maybe feudalism was part of the problem, even if some Taoists had a kind of “Anarcho-feudalism” in mind.

So how much of what we have today we think of is perfectly fine and normal is a bad idea we’ll need to get over? And I’m not talking the usual critiques of things like AI (which is easy), but other technologies and policies and the like.

Focusing America on the automobile is one that I think is a big mistake, even if I like having one. It’s led to racist zoning, sprawling suburbs, loss of public transportation, pollution, and the like. I’m not saying automobiles are bad, but man did we overdo it for various reasons.

Try to imagine if that hadn’t happened.

I’ve also wondered about the impact of parts of pop culture. Things I loved in my youth have become sprawling, money-sucking mega-franchises. Was it large company consolidation that we needed to avoid? Something else? Why is it now when I hear of anything Star Wars, Star Trek, or Marvel I just assume I won’t like it?

What was missed because we made another Star Trek?

In another case I definitely felt that too much of our world got driven by graphics. Systems get bigger, cards get larger, all so we can watch web pages that look like movies and play games that don’t look like games. A few years ago I found Team Fortress 2 (a fave of mine for ages) still runs off of CPUs and looks fine in its stylized way.

How many resources got poured into pretty? Maybe we just didn’t need as much photorealism?

I’ve also questioned office software. I mean I self-publish out of LibreOffice, which is basically Microsoft Word ten years ago. I’ve worked with tools that store enormous amounts of data no one cares about. Look I’m fine with graphics software getting more powerful (albeit again, needing the hardware) but otherwise? Not sure.

I’d like something that does its job with options, not has something that does so much more than anyone needs. Or maybe some software can be more modular.

Try asking what we’re used to now that kind of has flaws is something we didn’t need or needed less of?

Steven Savage

The Unaccountability Man

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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)

So lately for many reasons I’ve been thinking about how supposedly Great Men fail and let us down. We’ve all been disappointed, and as a person working in technology, I’ve had so many supposed luminaries disappoint me. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile, and I found something that helps understand it and makes clear how really bad it is to Hero Worship someone into deciding your life.

(And notice how we always talk Great Men? More on that later . . .)

Now as any regular reader knows, The Unaccountability Machine was a book that changed how I see the world, and I haven’t yet shut up about it. As I continue to not shut up about it, let me sum it up quickly: the book’s thesis ends up being organizations go insane because they follow limited measures as goals (like stock market value). These organizations may persist – they may be quite good at it when they go mad – but their decisions will cause problems.

Those problems, by the way, are sort of the last twenty-thirty years.

Now the idea of some Great Awesome Business Leader is a form of madness no different than deciding stock value is the only thing to pursue. You have decided to focus only on one thing, and that thing is “whatever this dude says.” That is insane it’s just one we allow because some people believe in the Great Super Savior who will save us.

(Also, ever notice how this one Dude also is good for stock prices? Hmmm . . . )

Anyway this problem has a few facets.

First, as cynical as I am about some Great Dude Saving us, let’s say you find an actual Great Dude. Fine, maybe they’re worth following but for how long? They may navigate issues today but not tomorrow after the world changes. They may age out of understanding things or just age. They might drop a bunch of very expensive hallcinogens on some New Age trip and fry their brains. Someone truly awesome isn’t forever and is still only human.

And that’s assuming that the hero-worship, the money, doesn’t go to their head. How many people who actually had at least some good ideas got so insulated from reality they lost any actual skill they had? How would we know when we’re so busy still telling how awesome they are.

Second, there’s what ed Zitron called the Business Idiot. People who know how to play the various stock market and business games but don’t really know anything else. They’re good, perhaps every good at fundraising and upping the stock price and getting venture capital – but that’s all they’re good at. They’v learned how to work the system, and in doing so give an illusion of a deliverable.

Follow those people – who are great at selling themselves – as you have the madness of following a so-called Great Man, but also of following a shyster.

Third, there’s people who fit the Great Man who are similar, fitting what I call The Narrative. Some guy shows up who says the right thing and does the right thing that fits people – and the press’ – narratives and wham they’re rich and famous. You can make a lot of money and get power jut by checking off the right boxes at the right time. This I think explains a lot of people.

This is where the term Great Man reveals the sexism in the discussions. Which tells you how much The Narrative controls our thoughts.

Fourth, of course, the Great Man idea just leads to grifters coming in, lying, and ripping people off. And we keep falling for it.

Looking for some hero to save the day, for someone to be the next Fill In The Blank, is a fools game. That person probably isn’t out there, possibly is coning you, and even if they are out there, they won’t last, they will get out of touch or want to retire or just pass away. It’s madness to rely on one person, no different than running a company just to get the stock price to go up.

Even if you benefit, what you leave in your wake will be harmful.

Steven Savage

Alternate Steves: Work From Home

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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 wrote earlier about the idea of thinking about my different choices in the past, and how my life may have gone if economic, political, and technical trends had been different. I’m using this idea to explore how work from home may have become prominent well before COVID, with a Steve-that-could have been as a viewpoint.

Work from home has been around longer than many people realize (indeed I was in a pilot in 2005 to do two days at home a week). But what could have happened to make it a real thing much earlier? Let’s check in on an Alternate Steve in a world where Work From Home became a big thing in the 90s.

One thing that makes me feel old in 2025 is how many people who don’t get that working from home wasn’t normal at one point. OK, I’m not exactly young and it’s been “a thing” for 30 years, but I remember. Of course I was also there when things changed, and as dull as “we worked from home more” sounds, it was pretty wild when it became normal.

OK, so flash back to the very early 90s. I just graduated from college, failed to get into graduate school, and was debating how to pursue my coveted academic career. A friend of mine gave me some of the best advice they’d given me by taking me aside, telling me I was being stupid, and to take a year to get an actual job. I could still live and work near campus, I might take courses, but seriously, he suggested I take a break.

So I actually sat down, thought it over, and realized I had a solution – temping.

Temping made pretty good money in the 90s if you had skills with computers and clerical works, and I was a huge nerd who’d just graduated college. I typed fast, knew how things worked, and was game for anything, so I went to a temp agency and a week later started a six month assignment to cover someone on maternity leave, while getting paid the most I ever had been.

(It also helped that me and some of my fellow graduates got a place with a bunch of tiny “bedrooms” and low rent.)

One great thing about temping is that it gives you opportunities to show off and find new things to do. People don’t want to ditch a temp that learns things and it’s not hard to become very vital – you fill in gaps other people weren’t. Around about 1991 or so the start of the Work From Home trend started, and I found myself a gap to fill.

The early 90s were a strange time after the equally strange 80s. There was cynicism from the economic ups and downs of the 80s mixed in with remaining go-go enthusiasm. We had more and more prominent technologies like PCs and (then comical-looking) mobile phones. There was business-worship as seen by books by folks like Iococa. That was all you needed – ironically – for Work from Home to take off.

Companies doing Work From Home got attention in some business mags, spawning what was a small trend. You could save money and not need as much space with work from home! New technologies made it easier! You weren’t limited by geography! You had a competitive advantage! It seems the more it got talked about, the more people tried it.

Also for some reason almost every owner or C-level expert of those companies was some dude with feathered blonde hair.

I was intrigued because of the technology, but had to admit the cultural element was sort of a good laugh. The same feather-haired interchangeable guy might say how he saved money one interview, and talk about Family Values Of Dad Being Home the next. Yes it was hype. Yes, none of the companies I heard of survived past 2000. But it got everyone thinking then doing, and I was intrigued because this was an entire realignment of work and culture.

I liked a challenge I could have an impact, and it was like a puzzle to solve.

So in my temp assignment I decided to “help” with a work from home project. Oh, not me, I had to be in the office (for now)! But other people like execs and my manager and the senior artist. I knew tech, I knew admin, I could help them.

That turned my six month contract into eighteen, and by that time the writing was on the wall – Work From Home went from fad to trend. So with a fleshed-out resume and a sales pitch, I got myself hired at a consulting company that helped companies set up Work From Home. My boss also didn’t have the hair I’d come to be suspicious of – he kinda looked like Oliver Hardy.

Honestly it was wild. I moved to Chicago (along with one of my roommates and a friend looking for a change), and started helping people not have to travel to Chicago. Which was weird, especially considering where I lived in Chicago, but folks wanted our help.

And that meant I traveled everywhere. I met people, coached them, set stuff up, showed them cool things. I did not work from home as much as most of my clients, but I had fun. I didn’t work from home as much as the clients – hell, I usually did a kind of three day/half-day thing. But my hypocrisy aside, it was an adventure.

It was great. It was wonderful. There’s plenty we’re used to now but back then the Work From Home trend had magic:

  • Business Cybernetics got a minor revival in discussing how to organize offices and time. That’s one of the reason you saw “mail vans” picking up company correspondence before email got even bigger.
  • “Work From Home PCs” reshaped some of the market. Light enough to carry (but not a laptop), powerful enough to run basic office software. There was some real precise engineering there.
  • Time of work changed. 9 to 5 had been long dying or dead anyway, but Work From Home really shifted people’s schedules around.
  • Phone companies made bank and were ready to “set your home up for work” and of course charge your employer.
  • OfficeStar actually started in the 90s with their famous Supply Trucks that you see to this day. SNL did MULTIPLE skits about the Supply Trucks being the Home Bureaucrat’s equivalent of the Ice Cream Truck. But hey you need your pens and paper pads.
  • Kinkos created their newly branded Office Centers. These were really just Kinkos, but they had supplies, desks, etc. I don’t think they could have acquired those other companies without this success.
  • Bragging about work from home and competitive advantage was The Thing for various C-levels trying to impress people.

That was the obvious stuff. What I don’t think got or gets discussed enough is how much things changed outside of work. I watched public transport schedules shift and questions of funding come up. Office real estate declined in value, so people moved back to cities. There was a small panic in the early 2000s about the effect on construction companies. None of this was as radical as breathless news made it sound, but it added up.

And I wonder what might happen if it hadn’t? A few feather-haired guys in mags might never have gotten interviewed then what? We keep hauling an hour into work each day?

This is where I’d talk about how things ended, but it didn’t – but what did end was the Work From Home consulting company. I stuck with my employer for a decade, but past a certain point everyone who needs help from people like you got it, and more importantly, companies knew how to do it themselves.

I knew it was over at some point around year nine. We all did. When I got an offer to be a Technology Manager for the city, I don’t even know if my boss and I said out loud what was going on. That was over twenty years ago. Funny, I really only worked at two paces in my career, and the city is as big on Work from Home as anyone.

Now? Now Work From Home is so normal. It’s expected. Almost anyone I know with an office or creative type job is only in the office like two or three days. Being in the office full time gets you more money (you’d be surprised how many states have laws on that). It’s all so normal.

But I remember those wild times, getting off the bus in Chicago with a backpack full of paperwork, or me and Charlie parking the van so we could unload computers. I remember having to fly out to New York on short notice because of a new client engagement. I remember something new every day in our little world of the Work From Home People. I remember offices getting more and more uninhabited.

It’s all standard now. And I think that’s good, if a bit less exciting than when I was young.

Steven Savage