I’ve spent most of my career in tech, but my activist time is spent predominantly on housing policy. The org where I help out, Yimby Action, focuses on grassroots organizing and the attitude you allude to - that we just need to /one weird trick/ our way out of our problems - is something we encounter quite frequently from folks in industry.
I think the fundamental disconnect is that doing politics in a democracy means building consensus and engaging in the democratic process as a bloc. Building relationships, organizations, and institutions all help with that by reducing the cost of collective action, but the underlying task is always to convince people of a) a policy position and b) a political strategy.
If your only mental model of working with other humans assumes rigid power hierarchies, the assignment is much more about gathering information, making decisions, and disseminating orders. Challenges that are much more tractable via product design since it kinda assume away a lot of individual agency.
Anyway, that was all a meandering way of saying I think your call out wrt to attitudes is onto something and reflects something deeper in how some of us conceptualize group effort.
Beautifully written - thank you for your openness and vulnerability. Hoping that your story will inspire many more to consider the real aims of "frictionless" technologies. There is no forward progress without the friction between the tire and the road!
The point about friction is poignant.
I’ve spent most of my career in tech, but my activist time is spent predominantly on housing policy. The org where I help out, Yimby Action, focuses on grassroots organizing and the attitude you allude to - that we just need to /one weird trick/ our way out of our problems - is something we encounter quite frequently from folks in industry.
I think the fundamental disconnect is that doing politics in a democracy means building consensus and engaging in the democratic process as a bloc. Building relationships, organizations, and institutions all help with that by reducing the cost of collective action, but the underlying task is always to convince people of a) a policy position and b) a political strategy.
If your only mental model of working with other humans assumes rigid power hierarchies, the assignment is much more about gathering information, making decisions, and disseminating orders. Challenges that are much more tractable via product design since it kinda assume away a lot of individual agency.
Anyway, that was all a meandering way of saying I think your call out wrt to attitudes is onto something and reflects something deeper in how some of us conceptualize group effort.
Beautifully written - thank you for your openness and vulnerability. Hoping that your story will inspire many more to consider the real aims of "frictionless" technologies. There is no forward progress without the friction between the tire and the road!