# 128: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “What Tech Calls Thinking”
Story behind the Book Choice
“Arrogance” is going to be the buttom line of today’s book discussion. No, this is not because I am annoyed by the fact that I actually had to start a new Word document today. The old file with my previous 127 posts is 507 pages long now (Calibri pt 11, 1.15 space) and somehow it is starting to do funny things with the font and the page break. The reason why I am really grumpy today is because of the book I just finished reading. No worries, you are not going to read some shit storm about it. I will try to keep it fairly decent. I am not even grumpy about the book itself — I am grumpy about the fact that it tells me: Nothing seems to have changed in the relationship between the disciplines, particularly between the humanities and the technical subjects. This is not only sad, it is a shame, and such a waste of resources and innovation potential that our society desperately needs in order to solve the important problems facing the global community.
What I am hinting at above is called the “Two Cultures Problem.” I wrote an entire book about the dilemma, so I am not going into the details here. Just remember that the problem was made popular by a British scholar and author named C. P. Snow. He already lamented what I am lamenting here: humanities folks and tech/natural sciences people, also often social scientists (Third Culture), cannot talk to each other. You know what the easy answer often is? “Humanities people are damn arrogant.” I am sorry to say it: This is exactly my fresh impression after just finishing the reading.
Now you can say: “Sure, she likes tech and startups so much, why would she ever agree with someone who criticizes the Valley and tech culture?!” You know what? I bought the book because I am also critical of many things happening in the startup world. Hire and fire, workers’ rights, guerilla capitalism, too little big picture thinking, too many buzzwords — all these and many more things truly bother me too. But the difference is: They bother me because I think they stand in the way of solving important problems with technology. What you get from the book What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub is a different kind of critique. I am sorry to say this: It is the ‘typical’ critique of a (Leftist) literary studies scholar who wants to demonstrate to the world that reading novels and knowing about literary theory is basically the highest level of ingenuity that you can attain in life.
Fail! F. Sit down.
I will not go into the details of the author’s CV. Again, you can all google these things nowadays if you are interested. Just let me point out one thing — and I am saying this from the perspective of someone who also comes from the academic world, even from the humanities — Daub seems to have the classical mono-disciplinary education that, I guess, 98% of all professors still have nowadays; at least, in the humanities. Some people know what I think about this and the effect it has on actual problem solving done in universities. But I do not want to continue in the manner of “an eye for eye” in my post today. There is already so much of this in Daub’s book that it would be fatal to start some counter discourse here. I simply want to add some information from my perspective about three central concepts that Daub deals with.
Before I do so, let me just add one thing, in spite of all the criticism that might still emerge from my words today: I am totally in favor of academics writing books for a wider audience and I also like the fact that Daub, as it seems, also writes journalistic pieces, including articles for German newspapers. That is the kind of public intellectualism that I favor — no matter what exactly the content is about. But exactly because I am so much in favor of this, the book is also a wake-up call for me that makes me rethink my own writing. Right now in this very minute, I am quite happy that my blog here has become so subjective and personal in many ways.
That might make some posts appear a little naïve and even diary-like, without much structure and definite arguments and claims. But you know what? This at least ensures that my intention of just sharing thoughts does not run the risk of getting read as some expert contribution. I am not claiming to be an expert on tech, business, not even in the humanities on a larger scale. I am a thinking human being that likes to learn; particularly about things that I was not formally trained in (yet). I would just wish that some academics would start doing this as well instead of publishing books that manifest old disciplinary conflicts and borders.
- Arrogance of the humanities
Daub here in these lines talks about how tech workers, which he often quite derogatively refers to as “techies,” seem to create a job market that tries to be super hip and super different. I have to say, I also use the word techies a lot but I smile when I say it (in the company of software engineers) because I usually talk about our different strengths — how some of us really love the products and how some others really like getting into emotional and creative bla bla and how we therefore complement each other’s strenghts. Well, I am just saying that because Daub is so much into language and the language he uses is very often quite strong and obviously intended to mock tech culture in a way that is all but neutral or balanced. Again, as you all know, I totally like people who make a point and stand up for it. But somehow the mixture of not being informed about technology and speaking so badly about it just really bothered me. It becomes more and more cynical with every chapter. In fact, there is a passage when Daub shares his opinion about “trolling” which, I think, pretty much reflects his own approach to tech ‘thinking:”
“But trolling abandons both the shared purpose of a communication (to convince one another, to engage in dialogue) and the shared audience to which both you and the person challenging you want to appeal. What remains is the cynical subject, as Peters describes it.” (Daub 91)
Obviously, Daub is not into dialogue that much. Except for “literary” recitations, there is no conversation between him and someone from the tech industry included in the book. But back to the original passage above that illustrates this even more strikingly. I have chosen it to show you exactly what I mean by the “arrogance of the humanities.” It is exactly the arrogance that C. P. Snow critiqued already in the 1960s and which we still have not eliminated 70 years later. You have to read closely to not miss it here. Daub in the parentheses following the description that Snowflake offers a cloud data warehouse says this:
“I have no idea what that means and no intention of finding out.”
Do I actually need to explain more? This is exactly it. And you know what: I am just preparing a research grant proposal to further work on fixing this problem of the lack of interdisciplinary collaboration between tthe computer sciences and the humanities. This attitude here is just what gives me an additional boost. Maybe nobody is going to give me a grant for doing the research because humanities people will have to sign it and they probably do not even understand my proposal because I do not argue based on enumerating the plot of novels. But at least, nobody can say that there is no problem to fix! Remember, Daub’s book was published last year — 2020! Someone writes a book about tech and basically communicates in every single sentence how inferior the tech world and the Valley is and how much he does not even care about learning more! This is just so — arrrrggggghhhhh.
2. Disruption
Again, this is a wonderful example of how my initial expectation and the actual outcome of reading the book diverge. You know, the concept of “disruption” actually is a buzzword and I totally agree with Daub that people use it in quite an inflationary manner; also inside the tech world. But instead of actually exploring the use of the concept in a little more nuanced and balanced manner, the author goes on and on raging against capitalism, the digital economy, and certain tech leaders. By the way, he really has a number of people whom he returns to again and again to demonstrate how much they supposedly hate academia and how stupid and simple all tech thinking is. Peter Thiel, venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, is one of his favorites, next to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Do I have to remind anyone that these founders have changed the lives of practically everyone on this planet by now? Any comparison necessary to humanities ‘thinkers’?
You know what? Who said that “tech,” that is only Silicon Valley and the Bay Area for Daub, claims to be the world’s epicenter of thinking? Tech claims to be building great tech above and beyond everything else. And people working on technology development usually do so in order to solve human problems in a way that no previous technology can do. So, by always repeating that tech “thinking” is not in any way equal to the intellectual thinking by scholars on university campuses, I do think that Daub achieves the exact opposite: He elevates tech while unintentionally exposing the weakness of the humanities. And this happens because the book in no way keeps the promise of actually diving into the thought universe of the startup world.
The example of basically equating Schumpeter and disruption as we use it today is just one out of many examples. For the record: Schumpeter was an economist. Disruption — even though one can in some ways allude to the concept of “creative destruction” as generally meaning something new replaces something old in the market place — still is something very different. There are different types of disruption but the concept is usually used to describe how technology creates something completely now, even a new market, not (just) replacing something. But before I run the risk of getting deeper into it, which is not my intention and my expertise here, I just want to point out that this is just an example. Flawed analogies like the one on disruption appear throughout the entire book. And, please, I am a literary scholar and creative storyteller myself. I am totally fine with simplifying things in order to make people comprehend the general meaning of a term. But the means have to somehow correspond to the end, right? The promise of this book is:
“… a lively dismantling of the ideas that form the intellectual bedrock of the tech industry.” (back cover)
If this is your goal, then this strategy of simply adding up some literary studies paper extracts under the cover of a tech title does not work. I especially do not like that, again and again, the underlying argument is that tech supposedly claims to sell new thinking and that, as a literary scholar or humanist, you know all this better and you are able to unveil all the “fake” philosophies behind tech companies. Who says that? Again, one can very nicely link this to the concept of disruption here. I have never met people working in tech — no matter on which level — who wanted to compete with Nietzsche, Schopenhauer or Beckett. They do not want to “disrupt” philosophy — they, at leat quite often, want to disrupt markets. Yes, this often has serious consequences for the economy which need to be discussed from an ethics perspective. And yes, this has a lot to do with how capitalism works around the world, as Daub also argues. But when reading the book, I just happened to ask myself again and again: What is the point? What value does the author want to create with his writing except for bashing many scholars and intellectuals who actually did make contributions that were helpful for science and business alike, including Marshall McLuhan.
This also takes me to my final point on disruption: For sure, to repeat this, Daub is right in claiming that disruption often ends up being utilized by hyper-ambitious founders who lack the big picture thinking to fully comprehend what exactly their innovations are doing in the larger world. But the point is: If they create value with their products, their “thinking” does have an impact on the world. This is the one thing that the humanities are usually claiming but frequently fail to do. Furthermore, if they then claim that disruption does not really exist, that it is a myth, they really have not understood the concept. The one thing I suggest is that they go to some of the media houses trying to sell traditional newspaper these days or to small businesses who are all in danger of closing down if they not come up with new business models for the digital world. Of course, these effects are severe and I am totally in favor of critically discussing them, particularly when it comes to the entire “we need more unicorns in Europe debate.” But one thing is for sure: This is what disruption is doing, it is tangible and immediate, and the universities in Germany are just starting to feel what this will also mean for their business models.
3. Fail to succeed
Now, for this last one, I really have to hold my temper. Towards the end, Daub really bashes the entire culture of “fail to succeed” and “failing fast.” He even, as in this passage, links it to design thinking as a method that, by the way, is just slowly getting known among people in German public administrations — because they need help in innovating their institutions! And this takes me to the reason why I am getting so mad at this. It is because of the current situation that especially Germany is finding itself in right now. I am stressing Germany here because you will find so many articles and contributions by very smart people in the country from across all ranks, including politicans, who are publicly talking about the fact that Germany desperately needs more of a culture of “trial and error.” By the way, this goes back to some really reformist pedagogical thinkers of the 19th and early 20th century (e.g., Dewey, Montessori), just for the ‘intellectual’ record.
What I am saying: Germany is currently facing so many severe difficulties in managing the pandemic which can, to a large part, be attributed to the devastatingly slow digitalization of the public sector. When I say digitalization in this context, I am not talking about business models. I am still talking about stage 1, so to speak, of moving from paper to electronic documents and towards digitalizing administration processes — not even speaking of finally bringing online teaching to our children!!! And you know what? Much of this is because: We do NOT have a culture of trial and error! Our projects, no matter which ones, are still managed based on the waterfall principle: You think about it for many months, you plan for many more months, then you develop for years, and then after three or more years you start implementing…
But: people are dying today! They need solutions now!
Yes, this is radical, but at least the pandemic has forced people to give up on the waterfall model and replace it by more agile approaches. Yes, a buzzword again, but just as a basic definition: Agile means — TRIAL AND ERROR! You start, test, iterate, and go through as many feedback loops as needed. This is not some myth or fantasy, it is real, it saves lives! This is basically how any science is done, not even talking about vaccines or Corona apps. And, since Daub also stresses philosophy and ancient Greek thought so much, it is not so far away from the Socratic method of dialogue in which you also start with an argument and then keep rethinking it according to the feedback you get. But the difference is: technology is not about talking — it is about developing solutions that WORK! It is little wonder that most of the process optimization tools of design thinking and agile originated in software development.
Again, you could argue now: “Yes, but before, trial and error probably existed among the Romans, even the Neanderthals used trial and error to build simple tools… so, it is not an invention of “tech thinking.” YES! You know what, nobody is claiming this. Trial and error or fail to succeed is deeply human — it is just that the humanities do not use the method because they obviously do not care about efficiency and saving resources. Instead, they think for themselves and then write something down for years — that is it. Why would they change it? No lives are going to depend on our writing — I can leave the progress of humanity to others. To the “techies,” right? They can fix society’s problems and if they screw up sometimes or do not write sophisticated papers about it, then I am going to write a book about it and share how much smarter the humanities are.
I need to stop now because, as you can see, I am not quite keeping my promise of not paying back with some “talking back” shitstorm. I am sorry about this but I have been working on this problem of bringing the humanities into dialogue with business and tech for years and I simply do not see any advancements when reading this book. But that is my mistake, actually. If you want to really see some progress, you can go to the places where tech is being created. I have not been to the Valley myself, but if you go to Berlin Valley or some other startup ecosystems, you can see that the world is changing. The arts are joining forces with business and tech. It is finally happening — in practice.
You know how this is possible? It is because the people in these worlds — the ones that Daub does not know much about as he admits in his acknowledgements — actually appreciate each other’s skills. They come together because they all love tech in some way, even if they are not all programmers. But if there is one thing that tech does teach you: You cannot do it alone. You cannot build a fairly complicated program in a few months just by yourself. You need the people that are strong in analytical thinking as well as the people who are more into creative design. You need these and many more on any project. And then you eventually get a product that creates value in the world. And, as a nice side effect, you learn what interdisciplinary collaboration really is about.
Let us hope that the humanities and the sciences are finally embarking on this journey too — behind the walls of the Ivory Tower that still exists in many places. But the bricks are falling down; slowly but surely.
Reflection Questions
1) Do you think it makes sense to advocate intercultural dialogue between the disciplines or is it hopeless to trigger advancements from outside?
2) What is your personal strategy when dealing with people who do not value or even see your expertise?
3) What is your favorite tech device? Did you ever check who invented it?