Slashdot Mirror
Beyond The Programmers' Stone
Alan G. Carter writes "Some transcripts of lectures to software engineers called The Programmers' Stone recently created some interest here on Slashdot, and I had a great many, very positive responses.
Since doing the Stone, I've been looking for a deeper theory that explains what is going in the "Mappers vs. Packers" divide. Because of the wonderful response to the Stone, I've created a new website,
Reciprocality, that describes the deeper work.
Some of the ideas are radical, but it answers an awful lot of questions. It's all concrete and testable, and the fact that it's also an extropian technomystical feeding frenzy just proves we were right all along :-)
"
Mr. Carter has constructed a theory of anthroplogy based about the premise that some large percentage of people are diseased. He has done this based on his observation of white-collar workers, primarily in technical fields.
Earlier in this century Katherine C. Briggs cast her net wider. She observed some of the same phenomena, but in a much bigger context. She came up with a different interpretation.
The sub-branch of psychology she founded has the following paradigm:
A certain sub-population can be characterized as particularly change- and risk- adverse, very traditionalist and conservative, very methodical and habitual - among other traits. Testing indicates these people comprise about one third of the US population. Testing in workplaces, the military, and college programs which specialize in business training indicates that this change-adverse population is disproportionately represented among executives and business people. Let's call these people group A.
A different sub-population (group B) can be characterized as particularly risk- and change- embracing; more dare-devil and capricious. They, too, account for about one third of the US population. This population has disproportionately high school drop-out rates, and a much lower tolerance of the routine of the office; they are less common in the white-collar world, and tend to work in "interupt-driven" jobs such as "business development".
Group C, the remaining third-to-a-quarter (depending on which study you use) is the lump which has several familiar factions in it. It is not characterized (as a whole) as being particularly change-adverse or change-embracing (though individual members maybe on either end of that scale.) Instead, they are characterized by a facility with (and reliance on) abstract thought, which the other two populations don't share. In is in this population that you find the Poets, the Activists, the Mystics - and the Scientists, Architects, and yes, Hackers.
One of the foundations of this paradigm is that all these trait-clusters (which define these populations) are equally "normal", healthful, viable and valid. They have pathologies, but they aren't themselves pathologies.
What it looks like, from the perspective of this paradigm, is that Mr. Carter generalized from the interactions of his Group C friends, students and collegues with a largely Group A -rich population, to wit, The Suits. And perceiving the very palpable difference between these kinds of people, he then made an presumption as old as humankind: If They are different from Us, either They or Us must be broken/wrong/bad/defective/sick/disordered.
It is these Suits, these (usually) Group A people, who are Packers. They are not Packers because they are defective or diseased. They are Packers because Packing is an amazingly useful and viable memetic strategy - ask Mr. Ford about his factories. I agree: Packing is an abysmal strategy for making software. But it is kick ass for making cars, running a farm, or, yes, packing boxes.
In fact, it's they very success of Packing that's at the root of this problem. All those Packers have had such success with it so far, they have trouble imagining it could fail them. They have a hammer, and have seen many nails; if they are skeptical about the concept of certain nail-like objects being "screws", that is only to be expected.
And give them some credit: If someone working for you insisted that the methodology which has worked for you your entire life was wrong, you'd probably be rather skeptical.
Packers live in a world in which Packing, by and large, works. Mappers, unfortunately, have to live in a society filled with Packers (the Group B, the swing vote, usually effectively supports Group A for reasons to complicated to go into here). So natural Mappers to learn to Pack. Since Packers can get through life without learning much to Map, they often slack off and don't bother.
Briggs wrote about the phenomenon of "Protective Coloration", whereby people of a minority type learn to behave in the way of a majority (or socially sanctioned) type. This is a major life stressor, and trying to keep up the charade generally makes one awfully miserable. This applies precisely to the problem of our native Mappers, people from Group C, who learned to put aside the strategy of Mapping for the more approved strategy of Packing.
It is this which causes the Ghost Not, and from there, the rest of Mr. Carter's theory can proceed.
But I must take issue with the presumption that someone has to be pathological. The problem is not that Packers are defective or diseased Mappers languishing for a cure. The problem is that Packers can impose Packing on software projects.
The solution in some combination of
People interested in learning more about this paradigm of psychology/anthropology should turn to:
and should ignore just about everything on the www about the MBTI.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
I'm fond of the lunatic fringe. Any social theory that obviously springs from the mind of someone "not addicted to ritual thinking" (like, say, providing citations, or reading any of the foundational theorists) is bound to have some genuine gutbusters.
. html) makes me wonder about whether or not I'm still under warrantee.
First off, any theory which claims to "provid[e] an explicit, physical interpretation" of any of the Gnostic Gospels is a winner. Anything that make the Gospel of Thomas more comprehensible without the use of hallucinogenic drugs is a valuable resource in my intellectual toolkit. I will put that document in the toolkit, right next to the hallucinogenic drugs.
Secondly, any theory that discusses a social structure using terms generally applied to operating systems (http://www.melloworld.com/Reciprocality/r1/index
"Hi, thanks for calling the Western Culture Manufacturing Corporation Technical Support Line, my name is Marcel, how may I help you today?"
"Uhh, I downloaded the Irony Service Pack, and I was trying to install, but I got this error... it was, like, explorer.exe caused an invalid meme fault in humor.dll..."
"Okay, run Scandisk and delete all your temorary friends, then restart your life. That should work fine."
[hold music]
I'm usually pretty skeptical about theories that declare the theorists as "immune" or "above" a pathology or unsavory trait present in all those not approved of by the theorist. But nothing beats being told that, since I'm a singularly unimaginative coder, I'm addicted to boredom, and I don't even know it! And here I was, thinking that The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Captialism explained the spread of european industrial culture across the face of the earth, when in fact, all those poor "natives" were simply addicted to their own unhealthy thought processes!