bias

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

Changing Tech Culture’s Attitude Towards Women

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com  Steve’s Tumblr)

Management consultant Erwin Van Der Koogh wrote an essay on tech and how women are treated, “This industry and living life on the lowest difficulty setting,”  Go read the entire thing, but he pretty much sums it up by noting that at a tech conference his worst fear is making a mistake, but a female colleague’s worst fear is sexual assault and harassment.

It pretty much sums up issues of women in tech in that they face inordinate issues men don’t face, and these issues are pretty horrific.  When people say white male is the lowest difficulty setting in, say, tech, that’s because we’re not facing the same challenges.  We’re playing a game with infinite lives; women are playing Dark Souls III.

His experiences and those of the woman he writes about are not alone.  I’ve talked about bias in tech to a room nodding sadly.  Everyone in tech who listens can hear stories about sexism.  Just watch the news in tech, and stories of bias pop up repeatedly.

It’s wrong.

It’s wrong on any number of ethical levels, moral levels, societal levels, and civic levels.  Bigotry of any kind is corrosive, acid on the soul, eating away decent things.

It’s wrong in tech, an industry that should put ideas and work and creativity first – but too often doesn’t.  When someone’s gender matters more than their work, then that’s anathema to what we’re supposedly about.

And as a white guy – and if you’re one of me in tech – as Erwin points out, we need to make an effort to solve it.  I’ll put it simply – we’re having a comparatively easy time, we have the (at times unwarranted) attention, so we have the ability to make a difference, and we should.  Else we’re letting our industry be something it shouldn’t be, as well as letting our fellow techs drag themselves down with their own bias.

Tech should be what we think it is.

 

Erwin proposes solutions where we work on ourselves, which is vital.  Start with yourself – I can thank my lucky stars I had several female managers and co-workers that helped me see sexism and deal with it.

I’d say we also need to call out sexism in tech when possible, be it in person or on Twitter or whatever.  Just get into the habit of it.

However a big thing we should do is change the culture of tech.  To do that, there’s plenty of places to get involved in REALLY changing the culture – the organizations.  If you want to make a difference promote these or help out.  We change the culture by getting involved and supporting women getting into tech – and staying there.

  • Girl Develop IT – A nonprofit that provides accessible programs for women who want to learn coding.
  • Girls Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping young women learn technical skills in a supportive atmosphere.
  • Girls Teaching Girls To Code – A Bay Area program where women in CS teach Bay Area high school girls to code.
  • Grace Hopper Celebration – Produced by the Anita Borg institute, this is a celebration of women in computing.
  • Ladies Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping people learn beginner technical skills in a comfortable, social way.
  • Made With Code – Promotes women in coding with projects, events, and mentoring. Has several alliances and supporters.
  • Mothercoders – An organization focused on helping mothers get tech-savvy and up-to-date for this economy
  • National Center For Women And Information Technology – Focuses on correcting gender imbalance in technology, and bringing the balance of diversity to the industry.
  • Rails Girls – A worldwide group that works to empower women with technology.
  • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.
  • Tech Girls Canada – Provides national leadership for the various industry groups in Canada encouraging women in tech careers.
  • Girls Make Games – A series of international summer camps encouraging girls to explore the world of video games.

The resources are there.

– Steve

Star Wars – The Force Awakens: Fear Of Another Blackness And Another Femininity

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Few of us who are geeks on the internet (perhaps I repeat myself) are unaware that some people are offended at “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” – over racial and gender issues. It’s not hard to find people complaining that:

  • There is a Stormtrooper who is black.
  • There is a heroine who is female.

I’d go into why people seem to be disturbed by these completely unremarkable things, but it’s a bit hard to describe it beyond “bigotry and weird conspiracy theories” that seem to be a cover for assorted personal insecurities.  Actually that is my explanation and what you do see on the internet.

We may shrug off these reactions as simple racism or sexism. We may laugh at the strange reactions or convoluted conspiracy theories conjured up about the cast and film. We may be offended (and understandably so). But there’s another issue about those offended at the race and gender of the leads I’d like to address.

Whatever the reason or the convoluted explanations people seem to take offense at a lead that is black and a lead that is female. For whatever reasons they doubt they could or should be that color or that gender. This indicates not just bigotry but a fundamental aspect of their bigotry that tells us far more about the biases of those so offended at John Boyega and Daisy Ridley being in the movie.

The setting of “Star Wars” is, simply, in the past in another galaxy. It is not our world, let alone our galaxy, nor our time. THe inhabitants of this setting, though we may call the human, simply are not us. They are, at best, “essentially human.”

But in the end these humans are aliens.

If someone subscribes to the idea that people of a certain skin color or certain gender have specific traits, there is no reason to assume they apply to “humans” in the universe of “Star Wars.” The people we think of as human are, as noted, aliens.  Whatever bias you have towards humans of a given race and gender, why should they apply to these humanlike aliens?

The racism and sexism flung at the new film, all other factors aside, reflect a lack of thought, a lack of depth, and a lack of imagination. There is little attempt to imagine a different setting or universe by those so biased against the cast.

Looking at this we realize that those acting in bigoted manners (beyond those just causing trouble) are treating their ideas of “blackness,” of “whiteness,” of “female” as universal traits. These concepts are immutable and inviolable to them. They are, essentially, religious beliefs.

(And this doesn’t even address the ridiculousness of said beliefs period.)

At this point we can see that these biases are even more limiting than they may originally seem. The bigots cannot imagine differently, or dream of a different world – or its equally likely they don’t wish to. Hey assume a tale of space wizards and psychic powers is constrained by their mundane ideas of skin color and genitals.

This likely explains the conspiracy theories and the like around “The Force Awakens” – if one sees race and gender traits as universal constants, then the only explanation one is left with for leads who are different races and genders than expected s some kind of conspiracy.  To imagine race and gender are as universal as the speed of light or gravity, then the only explanation a fevered mind can make is that those that deny these things are doing so actively and maliciously.

This is easy to understand as people who are highly biased are invested in said bias. It defines identity. If you must believe that a lead has to be your race (however you define it), your gender (however you define it), then any deviation is an existential threat. Much as these biases infest politics, they’ll infest anything.

It reveals how limited, how sad these bigots are.  They’ve taken simple bias and made it the Word of God, and can’t enjoy a film because of it.

  • Steve