I just want to share a little piece of this provocation, but would like to know how compelling it sounds? I’ve been sitting on it for a while and starting to think its probably not earning that much space in words. The overarching point is that anyone who complains about constraints imposed on them as being constraints in general either isn’t making something purposeful enough to concretely challenge the constraints or isn’t actually designing because they haven’t done the hard work of understanding the constraints between them and their purpose. Anyway, this is a snippet from a longer piece which leads to a point that the scumbags didn’t take over, but instead the environment evolved to create the perfect habitat for scumbags who want to make money from providing as little value as possible:
The constraints of taking up space
Software was once sold on physical media packaged in boxes that were displayed with price tags on shelves alongside competing products in brick and mortar stores.
Limited shelf space stifled software makers into making products innovative enough to earn that shelf space.
The box that packaged the product stifled software makers into having a concrete purpose for their product which would compel more interest than the boxes beside it.
The price tag stifled software makers into ensuring that the product does everything it says on the box.
The installation media stifled software makers into making sure their product was complete and would function.
The need to install that software, completely, on the buyer’s computer stifled the software makers further into delivering on the promises of their product.
The pre-broadband era stifled software makers into ensuring that any updates justified the time and effort it would take to get the bits down the pipe.
But then…
Connectivity speeds increased, and always-on broadband connectivity became widespread. Boxes and installation media were replaced by online purchases and software downloads.
Automatic updates reduced the importance of version numbers. Major releases which marked a haul of improvements significant enough to consider it a new product became less significant. The concept of completeness in software was being replaced by iterative improvements. A constant state of becoming.
The Web matured with advancements in CSS and Javascript. Web sites made way for Web apps. Installation via downloads was replaced by Software-as-a-service. It’s all on a web server, not taking up any space on your computer’s internal storage.
Software as a service instead of a product replaced the up-front price tag with the subscription model.
…and here we are. All of the aspects of software products that take up space, whether that be in a store, in your home, on your hard disk, or in your bank account, are gone.
hello! it has been an entire fuck of a couple of weeks
my take on this is that I agree with all of it (and I think you’ve posted along these lines on Mastodon too), but that makes it maybe uniquely ineffective on me as a provocation. these are excellent points, but they go down too well; something’s missing that might stop an agreeable reader from being compelled to read on.
my scattered thoughts (reassembled as much as they can be after two weeks of hell) are more or less that I’d love to see a short call to action by the end of this. the constraints that used to paradoxically make software better are gone for most developers, but there are exceptions – indie game developers, for example, tend to either operate as if they’re similarly constrained, or have other constraints that tend to inform their software and add value and uniqueness to it. what can I do to be more like them? I would love to make more constrained but more honest software. the call to action doesn’t have to answer that question specifically, but I think it’d be very effective to preview an answer to a question like “right, but what can I do about it?”
Hey, thanks!
It’s interesting that you bring up the indie game developers because games—as software products—are such an interesting exception in my mind because they are games they have a concrete, and immovable, purpose built into them. Even though the game industry is by no means not-getting-shittier, it still depends on that core purpose being satisfied somewhat. I.e. being enjoyable to play. Also, games can’t benefit from the abstraction from the end-user by being B2B corporate subscription models. They are always(?) paid for by the person who is using them.
This is another part of the larger post the above text is a sample of, that most of this purposeless software is optimised to be sold to people who will then impose it on their subordinates.
You are right about the question “right, what can I do about it?” for sure! Pretty much all of my previous blog posts have had comments exactly like that. And…to be honest it’s a tough one for me. I feel like identifying reasons for the situation is exhausting for me, which I guess I resolve to it being hard work and then I wonder, is identifying problems the hard part or is solving problems the hard part, but then I always settle with the belief that they are two separate hard parts.
I can honestly say I don’t know what can be done about these things because I’ve invested so little energy into thinking about that. That’s actually what I’ve been trying so hard to define design as being. The process that does that - as I am always careful to say, design isn’t “problem solving” but rather “purpose satisfying” because these things are addressed in a fluid nature.
Am I making excuses for doing half the job of a critic? Perhaps… But I feel like I need to keep understanding the situation before I would feel comfortable throwing out ideas to address it, at least ideas that I would be confident enough in to put my name behind them.