There’s an excellent book called How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, by Guardian columnist Francis Wheen. It’s an hilarious account of some of the truely crazy things that many influential figures, such as politicians, believe in. The fundamental aim of the book is not to be funny however, it is to highlight a disturbing modern trend: A rejection of the values of the Age of Enlightenment in favour of those of Postmodernism. Or to put it another way, a rejection of logic, reason and an evidence-based scientific method in favour of evasive, subjective attempts to pretend that every idea is of equal worth. (Great! says the postmodernist. We’re free of the tyranny of absolutism! Shite! says I. Now I can’t tell the good stuff from the bad.)
Luckily, in engineering you absolutely can tell the good stuff from the bad. If it works, it’s good (’to work’ might be a complicated concept, in that it can include many factors with different weightings, and can occur in degrees, but it’s emphatically not subjective). If the bridge collapses, it’s bad, no matter how you ‘read the narrative’. If the accounting package adds the numbers up wrong, it’s bad.
Despite this engineering truth, I’ve seen some disturbing trends in software engineering over the last few years which have depressing parallels with postmodernism.
Resorting to ‘Cool’
This is usually quite harmless, and we’ve all indulged in it when we use shared cultural references to aid communication (sci-fi, gaming, movies, philosophy). We invoke metaphors from Star Wars or Dungeons and Dragons to back up our points. That’s cool. The problems start to occur when we use coolness as a reason in itself rather than an aid to communication. That’s not cool at all. Shu-Ha-Ri sounds very profound and esoteric, and it probably makes a lot of sense in the world of martial arts. But guess what - it’s got very little to do with software engineering. As a metaphor, it can help to understand the way that people - even engineers - acquire their expertise. But as a model for software process, it sucks. It should be patently clear to anyone who has written commercial software that this is a team sport. Any process that advocates a model where engineers ‘transcend’ that same process is not taking that team-sport fact into account. (Yes, individuals will learn the craft of programming in steps like shu-ha-ri, but they’ll still have to pull together with their colleagues so that the code can be read and maintained by anyone). The problem is that Shu-Ha-Ri is a beautifully cool idea. As such, it will die that bit more reluctantly than other off-target metaphors that we couldn’t picture in a yellow jump suit and brandishing a samurai sword.
A Suspension of Critical Thought
Too many overly-hyped or poorly thought-out ideas have been floated in software engineering than I care to remember. And in recent years there has been a shockingly high degree of tolerance in our business for all kinds of claptrap (for examples, just scrape the bottom of Gartner’s Trough of Despair to find examples that are unlikely to re-emerge). This is in part due to the kind of political correctness and exagerated open-mindedness for which postmodernism is famous. Being nice, is well, nice. But that’s not the same as being correct. In my book, it’s better to be correct (and better again if you can be nice while being correct, though that’s not always possible). Ironically, the explosion of opinions expressed through blogs has done nothing to squeeze out bogus ideas, in some cases making matters even worse. I can think of two reasons why this might be the case.
Firstly, the community spirit that has evolved around blogging is a problem. Again, community can be nice, but there’s nothing good about being collectively wrong. ‘Community’ is generally but mistakenly assumed to be a Good Thing. It can be good or bad. When a community becomes closed and isolates itself from correction from the outside you end up with a Valley of the Squinting Windows - albeit Silicon. The international community may have helped bring an end to apartheid, but the closed community that was in power helped to keep it together for so long in the first place. Think of any bad social scenario, and you can be sure that it had its corresponding ‘community’. Similarly, putting community above correctness is a common failing of today’s blogosphere, and results in that community defending the indefensible in the name of kinsmanship. Because blogging is relatively new, some bloggers are united merely by the fact that they blog. I strongly suspect (or am I just hoping?) that as the number of bloggers increases, and blogging becomes increasingly mainstream, this particular attitude will melt away.
The use of the phrase ’scientific community’ is an interesting one. It’s accurate in the sense that this is a group of people united in their adherence to certain Enlightenment principles, and their desire to add to the sum of human knowledge. But it’s hardly a warm and fuzzy environment. There is cut-throat competition and bitter rivalry within this community, with grants and kudos always up for grabs (The Cold Fusion bun fight and the Human Genome project rivalry are two examples that come to mind). It mightn’t always be nice, but it works: The competition of ideas and the supremacy of emperical evidence sees to that. Ideas are there to be attacked. The Software Engineering community could learn a lot from this.
Secondly, the blogosphere is over-represented by what is known in the UK as the Chattering Classes. By this I mean those who, detached from the daily realities of software engineering, try to assume the mantle of industry thought-leader, but instead end up merely being cheer-leaders for the latest half-baked idea to hit the headlines. The kind of person who can hold down a position of engineering responsibility in the workplace, perhaps also in the home, have a social life and blog relentlessly and relevently is a rare one indeed. Don’t get me wrong. They exist! I’ve met some of them. Some of them are based right here in Cork and I take my hat off to them. But most mortals either blog only rarely (I fall into that category, blogging on average only once a month) or knock out irrelevent posts hand over fist. The point is that the blogosphere is under-represented by folks who actually work on the shop floor of software engineering.
Opaque Jargon
Now hang on. Of course we have jargon - so does the doctor, the physicist and just about every other specialist. But I’m talking about something more. Try to digest the following introduction to a conference in Santa Fe:
The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.
This deliciously ironic opening gambit eventually drew laughter from the audience at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace, held in Santa Cruz, California in April, 1991, when Chip Morningstar tried to deliver it with a straight face. Read his wonderful description of the event. Morningstar’s purpose was parody, of course. The article includes a description the difference between normal jargon, and the kind of opaque, deliberately impenetrable jargon favoured by postmodernists. I see the same kind of deliberately vague terminology used even in an engineering discipline - our own. The most recent example of course was W*b 2.0 - a topic I do not need or wish to return to - whose meaning disappeared under the slightest examination. Compare this with the kind of currency minted by Martin Fowler - that supreme lexicographer of software engineering. Now there’s a man who knows how to define his terms! The difference is that he tries to create a vocabulary that we can meaningfully share, whereas other forces are cranking out buzzwords to keep the industry permanently breathless with anticipation of revolution.
If we’re lucky, this is just a by-product of necessary marketing activity. If it reaches any deeper (in other words if we software engineers don’t publically maintain a level of critical analysis in the face of new ideas) we’re screwed.
- brendan lawlor -
Technorati Tags: software engineering, postmodernism, Shu-Ha-Ri, blogosphere, Jargon, Martin Fowler
Perhaps my hopes for a maturing of the blogging community through sheer numbers is misplaced. According to a Gartner Study, the phenomenon is set to settle down from 2007 onwards. Those who are going to blog consistantly are doing so already. Many others have tried it and moved on.
It’s difficult to see a quick trend change in blogger maturity particularly when much of the blogging noise is from people simply wishing to be heard expressing some notorious opinion.
I find it a little annoying when the ‘old-world’ is dismissed by this ‘new-way’. I’m referring to being dissed at the recent IT@Cork conference where I was pigeon-holed to represent the non-techie suits of a dead conservative world.
There is a big element of trash media prominent in the blogger world hiding the value element. The trough of disillusionment for blogging is coming soon I feel.
I feel your pain Donagh
I wasn’t impressed at the treatment that was handed out to you during that session. Your point was valid - that ‘old’ and ‘new’ methods need to be combined. This is obviously true, but instead of providing a reasoned and helpful response, Marc Cantor simply pigeon-holed you as a suit and himself as a geek, as if that was an answer.
I think the IT audience here in Cork expects something more than entertainment from their speakers.
I hope blogging as a whole doesn’t fall into disrepute. We can all see the value in it. I just hope the signal to noise ration improves.
Very interesting piece Brendan. Just a thought from a seasoned Enlightenment basher…not all critiques of the Enlightenment seek to reject logic, reason or empirically based scientific enquiry. For some the goal is to understand and explore the possibility of objective knowledge and to view subjective knowledge on a range from the individual to the collective. Scientific paradigms can still be seen as internally coherent thus allowing concepts such as right, wrong and good, bad to have meaning.
No doubt many have seized upon postmodern ideas and have attempted to vision up the new cyber world of the hive mind where the subjective knowledge of all reigns supreme, from Wikipedia to YouTube to bloggers. No doubt some (in the Bay Area) have seized upon this as Web 2.0 to get back the heady days of the late 90s and once again get their hands on the investment money of Middle America. As always the hype disguises the valuable ideas below.
I have to admit that my view of postmodernism is formed on its excesses and is therefore thoroughly negative - in much in the same way as some peoples negative view of science is based on its arrogance.
My biggest issue with the postmodern approach is its misapplication. It might have worth in a Humanities faculty, but it is positively dangerous in Engineering and Science. It is a dangerous misapplication in the same way that Social Darwinism was.
But even within the Humanities faculties, the postmodernist movement’s zeal smacks of a secular religion that exists primarily to serve its priestly hierarchy.
Within faculties everyone’s zeal smacks of religion as there are grants and positions at stake! I’d be happier dismissing the term postmodern altogether to be honest the concept of a movement is counter to many of the ideas labelled ‘postmodern’. I would think that questioning the concept of objective knowledge and ‘inherent or self-evident truth’ is as beneficial in the sciences as it is in the humanities.
I’m all for re-examining received wisdom based on new information, postulating theories that satisfy observed, reproduced and measured fact, generally kickin gover the traces. And I do understand that the current state of scienfic knowledge is a model - a layer over the unknown.
But there is a big gap between allowing for this fact, and saying that this is an indication of how subjective our knowledge is (and therefore somehow not true).
The sum of scientific knowledge is immune to the accusations of being just another subjective viewpoint for at least three reasons that I can think of:
1) It has a predictive component: successful theories account not just for older measurements, but for measurements which have yet to be made. In this way it can be said to be more than just a subjective ‘narrative’.
2) Despite differences on current work, the vast body of scientific knowledge is recognized to be true by the vast majority of scientists. This is hardly a subjective state of affairs.
3) Theories are not changed or abandoned simply because a new interpreter comes on the scene, but because new measurements contradict it, prompting new research. The individuals who arrive at new theories to deal with new measurements do so not by questioning the concept of objective knowledge but by using the same powerful combination of logic and observation that informed each and every one of their predecessors.
So while it is true to say that the current state of scientific truth is imperfect (tending towards perfection), this doesn’t mean that science is just another interpretation of reality. It’s by far the most truthful (in both senses) account of natural phenomenon that we have.
It’s a crap for judging english essays though.
Actually I’d agree with a lot of the above but on reflection am not sure that the whole subjective/objective thing is helpful. We might agree more if knowledge is viewed in terms of an evolving understanding rather than starting and finishing points.
Also if science isn’t an interpretation (I think phrases like ‘just another’ add an unnecessary judgement) the how can there be competing and conflicting scientific paradigms?
Stephen Jay Gould’s last book was on a related topic. How Science and the Humanities both have a valuable place in our world and in fact have no natural need to be in conflict. The title is “The Hedgehog the Fox and the Magister’s Pox. He had written a similar one in the 90’s “Rocks of Ages” on the topic of the unnecessary conflict between Science and Religion. Both very interesting. Though he is a little to historical in his explanation and ethereal in this discussion of the repercusions in today’s world to get down to the parallels with Blogging/Widipedia versus emperical knowldege.