We have to become as good at social invention and improvement as we are at product invention and improvement. We are too reliant on our institutions to either blow them up or try to preserve them in their original condition. We need them and need them continually improving.
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Everything is made up but the consequences are very real.
Because we have this tendency to conflate institutions with their buildings, it's easy to forget that institutions are actually processes. Church in the new testament is used in reference to a group of people in fellowship, not a building. "Online" banking is worded to remind us that the bank is not a place or building but instead a process. Kids in this pandemic are "going to school" without leaving their bedroom.
Institutions are processes and processes can be described as code. You write code, debug code, and open source library has free code that you pull down.
You write code.
George Washington was the world's first president. (Well, first president for a country; a few universities and colonies had someone with that title.) Our founding fathers just made that up.
George Washington was the world's first president. (Well, first president for a country; a few universities and colonies had someone with that title.) Our founding fathers just made that up.
You put code into and pull code out of free libraries of open code.
The name and concept of president got adopted elsewhere. More than 60 countries now have presidents. What our founding fathers created has benefitted countries around the world.
The name and concept of president got adopted elsewhere. More than 60 countries now have presidents. What our founding fathers created has benefitted countries around the world.
Programmers rushing to release software to deadline can incur tech debt. The software has the promised features but the code to support that is rushed and performs poorly. To pay down tech debt, programmers refactor, rewriting code so that it does what was intended but better.
The constitution missed some important issues. Four years after the constitution was signed, the Bill of Rights was added to it through ten amendments, clarifying important provisions like freedom of religion, the press, and speech.
You also have to debug code.
The 18th amendment banned alcohol. The 21st amendment banned the 18th amendment, repealing it to again allow Americans to drink like common savages.
And you have to add features.
The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote more than a century after the constitution had granted that power to (some) men.
Institutions are descriptions of how we interact. They are that simple and that complicated.
Dee Hock – the man who largely invented the modern credit card and the national (and now international) information system to support it – is a source of great insights. My favorite quote of his is this.
Our country was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who were trying to create something timeless. As it turns out, imaginations fail to anticipate progress. Even Newton got upgraded by Einstein.
After World War 1, about 500 companies started R&D departments. Why? They knew that creating new and improving old products had to become as normal as making original products. The folks working in these R&D labs were not Enlightenment thinkers; they were pragmatists, continually tweaking and improving, never believing they’d made a perfect product but always believing they could make it better.
More than 10,000 years ago, Clovis people roamed North America. Curiously, we know them by their technology – the stone tools they used for thousands of years. By contrast, our tools and products are changing all the time. One year we send letters, another year we send telegrams, then we make telephone calls and then video conference calls. Perhaps some day we will teleport, or cast our consciousness into telepresence robots on the other side of the globe.
We know that in a generation or two our current technology will seem quaint. So will our current institutions.
Without institutions, we are such scrawny primates that we might struggle to survive. With institutions we live long, prosperous lives. But institutions are just processes and it is impossible for any generation to get their code just right. Software can be released multiple times per day and – done right – it continually gets better. Given institutions define how we interact, they can’t be constantly changed. They can, however, be continuously changed. We need to write, debug, refactor, jettison, and add to the processes that define our institutions, making it as easy to continuously improve the processes we use that we call institutions as it is to improve the processes that we call software.
And given how reliant we are upon our institutions, this also changes us.
Shout out to Blake-o , my programmer son who helped me to define these steps in creating and sustaining code.
The constitution missed some important issues. Four years after the constitution was signed, the Bill of Rights was added to it through ten amendments, clarifying important provisions like freedom of religion, the press, and speech.
You also have to debug code.
The 18th amendment banned alcohol. The 21st amendment banned the 18th amendment, repealing it to again allow Americans to drink like common savages.
And you have to add features.
The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote more than a century after the constitution had granted that power to (some) men.
Institutions are descriptions of how we interact. They are that simple and that complicated.
Dee Hock – the man who largely invented the modern credit card and the national (and now international) information system to support it – is a source of great insights. My favorite quote of his is this.
“Every system has intended and unintended consequences. You always get the unintended consequences.”
Our country was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who were trying to create something timeless. As it turns out, imaginations fail to anticipate progress. Even Newton got upgraded by Einstein.
After World War 1, about 500 companies started R&D departments. Why? They knew that creating new and improving old products had to become as normal as making original products. The folks working in these R&D labs were not Enlightenment thinkers; they were pragmatists, continually tweaking and improving, never believing they’d made a perfect product but always believing they could make it better.
More than 10,000 years ago, Clovis people roamed North America. Curiously, we know them by their technology – the stone tools they used for thousands of years. By contrast, our tools and products are changing all the time. One year we send letters, another year we send telegrams, then we make telephone calls and then video conference calls. Perhaps some day we will teleport, or cast our consciousness into telepresence robots on the other side of the globe.
We know that in a generation or two our current technology will seem quaint. So will our current institutions.
Without institutions, we are such scrawny primates that we might struggle to survive. With institutions we live long, prosperous lives. But institutions are just processes and it is impossible for any generation to get their code just right. Software can be released multiple times per day and – done right – it continually gets better. Given institutions define how we interact, they can’t be constantly changed. They can, however, be continuously changed. We need to write, debug, refactor, jettison, and add to the processes that define our institutions, making it as easy to continuously improve the processes we use that we call institutions as it is to improve the processes that we call software.
And given how reliant we are upon our institutions, this also changes us.
Shout out to Blake-o , my programmer son who helped me to define these steps in creating and sustaining code.
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