Digital first, human last

I spoke to a business this week who had decided to remove many automations from their workflows because they’d realised those automations were hollowing out the human interactions that made the place tick, in exchange for pretty much nothing. Morale was down and nothing was better.

Interestingly, they traced it to the pandemic having been the trigger for this over-automation. The pandemic conditioned everyone to do everything “digital first” which removed a lot of the human experience, both at work and at home.

It reminded me of this Kurt Vonnegut quote I saw again recently:

(When Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know.

The moral of the story is – we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Optimising away the “friction” assumes the friction is the cost when, so often, it’s the whole point.

I know this automation reflex intimately. Computers can easily go from useful tool to digital fidget spinner.

So I fight it every day. Sometimes I even win and go out and buy the envelope.

Colin