OK- third post. And I don't really have any takes yet. Is that not the purpose of posting? All I've been posting about is where I'm coming from and the framework I wish to think and analyse the world in. The whole project of this blog for me is not to develop takes per se, but to develop this framework. In my last post I said I wanted to talk about Tech (or anything) in context. To include the space between the scaffolding of the object of inquiry. The sociological, historical and political context.
Wanting to build a more holistic framework in which to view the world is nothing new. Ask any humanities student. The hoards of twitter PHDs. However, If I did have anything original to offer with what I want to do with a humanities-brain, would be to apply it directly to business.
Historically, I have not been so caught up with reading, writing and theorising. I hated theory in university. I was intensely practical and utilitarian. I wanted to make stuff happen in the world around me. Anything else was a waste of time. I got into many things and tried many different creative and technical pursuits. However I ultimately landed on the pursuit of building start-ups. I found it to be the biggest kind of stuff you could make happen in the world. It had the largest effort/impact ratio.
One of the reasons I moved on from my tech bro ways was whenever I came up with an Idea that I thought would be big. At some point in time in developing it, there always would be the question of the point of the thing- in a deep sense. I then would subsequently abandon the project after deciding it would be ultimately kind of useless for society.
What I am doing now with this humanities-brain, is to extend this line of thinking. We shouldn't be building every sort of solution to a problem we think that has a good chance of scalability, user retention and high monthly actives. There's a trend of technologists thinking in these sorts of ways since the tech backlash in 2016, and I am part of this trend.
Wendy Liu, author of Abolish Silicone Valley (2020), is one of the first people in tech that I saw taking this path and inspired my own. Wendy did the whole IVY-league-build/sell-startup-endup-at-google pipeline. In wealth and comfort, she found herself disenfranchised about technology. She eventually did a 180 on it, did a Masters of Inequalities and Social Science at the London School of Economics. Her main area of inquiry- the political economy of Tech.
I'm currently about to start my 4th week in studying Political Economy at University of Sydney. I have similar intellectual goals. However- where Wendy and I differ is what I would like to do with our new found humanities-brain. Wendy is writing/speaking a lot for publications like the New Socialist and the Guardian. She is organising the unionisation of technology workers. She is trying to help tech workers break free from the ideology that pervades them.
While I respect and commend these efforts. And while I purport to advocate the abolishment of the philosophy of solutionism in technology. I think, I still want to figure out the killer-app that gets us out of this mess. But not in a literal sense. What I'm looking for is something that isn't like any of the avenues of change that I have available to me. Something that might exist outside existing institutions or models of thinking.
I've never liked doing things in the way you're supposed to do them. I like finding short cuts and bending rules. Doing things that don't make a lot of sense to other people. While sometimes my attempts fall flat, it's always a point of intellectual novelty in trying to do so, that motivates its pursuit. The heterodox approach to an object of pursuit, is itself, a form of creative expression.
When I say I want to apply this humanities-brain to business. I claim that you can be a more efficient capitalist with this framework of thinking than without. That you can use something like Marxist analysis to both attempt to destroy capitalism, but also use it for profit. Zizek likes to point out that the most efficient managers of capitalism is not the the Right, but the Left- the authoritarian communist state of China.
However, Zizek's claim is within the macroeconomic perspective. In the realm of the larger currents of nation states. What I would like to do is to bring this way of thinking down to the microeconomic level. To the level of the firm/individual.
In capitalist terms, I posit that the most efficient utilisation of a firm or individuals productive capacity, can only be assessed accurately through a sociological, historical and political lens. That the decisions we make as individuals are at their most rational in this mode.
The point of this approach, other than being able to get paid for it (which I wrote about in my last post), is to show the value of these theories beyond their ideological motivations. This would require an analytic approach to theories I learn free from value-judgments.
Doing so, I see the potential for moving this heterodox thinking into the orthodox. With the rise of Bootcamp grads and people learning as they go, I don't think many people have had a taste of what deep thought can afford. What if your agile squad at your tech company started utilising Marx? or if the UX guys started talking about Weber? Or the product guys were talking about Illich? Would they begin to question more than just the product they develop?
This is my main intellectual exercise. Somehow bringing these ideas to a real, material, and immediate level. Something that just makes practical sense. The example above seems a little weird, and far-fetched. That's because I myself, don't know how this would manifest. I just have a hunch that the collision of these worlds is a space I want to be in. Wendy Liu does presentations about how open source isn't actually open source. I might do preso's about how understanding the Labour theory of value makes you a better manager. I'm only half-joking.
The department of Political Economy at Sydney was created in reaction to the growing orthodox-isation of the Economics department in the university. Where sociology, politics, history and philosophical questions were set aside as an attempt to create a 'purer' social science. Just as the political economy situates itself in relation to orthodox economics- I wish to situate myself in relation to the firm or start-up.
If the theoretical framework I'd like to build was a uni degree in response to an orthodox mainstream school of thought, it would be in response to the MBA. It would be the heterodox-MBA. However, as I said earlier, It would start from the top down. It would start from the macro-level of societies and states, to always centre the broader implications of business decisions.
How exactly am I going to do that? I'm not sure. Right now I'm trying to find a good theoretical foundation. These are the units I've signed up for this year: Political Economy: A Primer, Economic Cycles and Instability, Dynamics of Economic Change, and Theories in Political Economy.
Currently, I have gotten a good overview of the major schools of economic thought. From Classical, Marxist, Keynesian/Post-Keynesian, Neoclassical and Institutional. I've grown a liking to a few particular thinkers- Hyman Minsky on Economic cycles and Perry Mehrling on Monetary systems.
My goal in taking this course up was to understand the mechanics of our world. How it works in a materialist sense. From what I've learned in the first few weeks is that every theory of how it works, every snapshot is highly contigent on the time and place it was conceived. That the whole project of trying to find a coherent and universal model of the world is problematic.
So I'm not just trying to bring a macro-level top-down theoretical view of society down into the micro- but also, I am attempting to create theories upon the mechanics of this world upon constantly shifting sands. To create models upon structures that barely hold onto them.
The challenge of which I may just have to accept. However, I have found things that feel very mechanical in a real way. Perry Mehrling's work on the Monetary systems for example- or what he calls the 'Money View'. Mehrling has created a theory not based on models or supply and demand but based on the plumbing of our financial system. It's theories like these, is why I think Political Economy is a better fit for my intellectual project over, say, Sociology. Markets and states as a system of agents, actors, and economies create a materialist foundation for which to theorise upon.
The need for something material. Is both influenced by my orthodox Marxist and practical inclinations. One of the students in my class is a Sociology grad and is taking this course and voiced this same concern. Before doing this course I romanticised academics as bastions of intellectual power, with the potential for real-world change. A few weeks in, I have met a few 'smart' academics and you just know they are going to keep their head in the clouds, divorced from reality. Stuck in a dream world. Theorising and posting takes till they die. This, I detest.
My best bet for bringing these top-level ideas down to earth would be to implement them myself and see how it works. To start start-ups. Create talks. Consult. All the while taking a very specific approach and perspective. Again this sounds far-fetched. But it's simply the outcome of taking a path that no one really takes. There is no map or footsteps to follow. Just a guy trying to make his way with a few radical ideas, some pirated pdfs, and a blog.