Good-Enoughing: Software Work Cultures at a Middle Tech Company
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In this lecture, Prof. Paula Bialski (University of St. Galen) offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings.
All content for Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology is the property of Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Good-Enoughing: Software Work Cultures at a Middle Tech Company
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In this lecture, Prof. Paula Bialski (University of St. Galen) offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings.
Data Materiality Episode 4: Yanni Loukissas on Understanding and Designing Data Settings
Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology
32 minutes 8 seconds
4 years ago
Data Materiality Episode 4: Yanni Loukissas on Understanding and Designing Data Settings
In this episode we speak with Yanni Loukissas, Associate Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, based in Atlanta, USA. With a background spanning design, computing, and ethnography, Yanni’s work has involved a series of unique approaches to thinking critically about data and its materialities. His book, All Data are Local, was the starting inspiration for many of the topics we discussed, which included: negotiating the relationships of various professional and intellectual identities; Yanni’s distinct take on data settings and their locality; his commitment to practice-based work, which has included composing algorithms and curating data; and his views on more useful ways to approach data visualisation.
The interview for this episode was recorded in June 2021.
Music from filmmusic.io "Clean Soul" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) License: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
About the podcast: Data Materiality is a podcast series about the ways in which digital data depends on physical forms and infrastructures, and comes to matter in practice and imagination. The impetus for this podcast is a three-year research project by the same name – Data Materiality – co-sponsored by Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture and the Vasari Centre for Art and Technology. The series is co-hosted by Joel McKim and Scott Rodgers.
For more information: www.bbk.ac.uk/vasari
To listen or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, visit: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/vasari-research-centre-for-art-and-technology/id1494065021
To listen or subscribe via Spotify, visit:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6JnV9RJc4QS50kMDKBBFHm
Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology
Good-Enoughing: Software Work Cultures at a Middle Tech Company
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In this lecture, Prof. Paula Bialski (University of St. Galen) offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings.
