code and craft - ComplexReal

[[TheBetween/the metacrisis|the metacrisis]] ## code and craft We cannot answer a metacrisis by tweaking technologies or policies. Resolution lies in a deeper layer of reality: our values and the ways in which these often unconscious judgements shape our perception. The metacrisis is an invitation to change our worldbuilding and worldseeing. The challenge is to find a tractable field of possibility--a place to start. [[more-what is a technology?]] We believe it’s best to begin at the source: the essentialist divisions of W.E.I.R.D. that confuse and coerce rather than clarify—think/feel, male/female, science/art, individual/societal, control/freedom, know/care. The contradictions of these false binaries fracture understanding, silo knowledge, split society, and disable individuals. [[more-consistency and contradictions]] Of these, we see the greatest opportunity in the central binary of code/craft which sharply separates mental and manual labor. In this division, code stands for decision-making based on measurements, metrics, and hard logic, and is set against the soft, human judgement of craft. The central claim of this binary is that rationality, science, and moral choice are logical, algorithmic processes, and that the algorithm, with its presumed objectivity, must supersede craft in all contexts. [[more-code and craft]] However, like all binaries, code/craft is a construct. It’s the old mind/body binary that became a key element in the debates about rationality, industrialization, and empire in the 19th century[^1]. And it’s manifestly wrong. Data does not exist "out there", independent of theory and human judgement, and science encompasses a lot more than measurements and logic. [[more-what code does and doesn’t do]] It’s hard to overstate the power of this binary. It goes all the way to what it means to be human. Our technologies always shape how we see the world and ourselves, often with [[more-science in trouble|unfortunate unintended consequences]]. In this case, we modeled our cognition on machines and our judgement on the metrics machines need to function. The most damning unintended consequence is the subsumption of all other values. "What you cannot measure, you cannot improve" becomes "what you cannot measure does not matter", which is further reduced to money because money weighs one kind of thing against another. Hence Cory Doctorow’s pervasive [enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification). AI is no different, it's a continuation of reducing multivalent human judgement to machine metrics. And yet, we know we’re more than our machines, which is why craft, in its broad form, is now being intensely re-examined and re-evaluated. At its core, > Craft is a basic human impulse; the desire to do a job well for its own sake, the pleasure of making and taking time to improve skills.[^2] A scientist immediately recognizes that her training and community are centered on this desire. She knows that good code is driven by craft, that craft expresses care, and that care is a skill developed through practice and lineage. Today, such craft lives mostly unacknowledged in the ever-shrinking cracks between efficiency and optimization, often camouflaged to pass as code (a skill now essential for our scientist when she applies for grants). It’s urgent that we break the isolation of working and existing in these cracks and help each other see the water we swim in, so we make sense—to ourselves—again. The re-integration of code and craft can produce the energy and breakthroughs we need at this time. [[TheBetween/the lights in the tunnel|the lights in the tunnel]] [^1]: