Month: June 2019

Tech drains English of meaning

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Alien ‘word’. Actually explaining the three kinds of quotes and Linux sensitivity. by Ezra S F

Semantic Drain and the Meaninglessness of Modern Work makes an interesting point that a problem with knowledge management work is that much of is filler work without a fulfilling purpose. I was far more stressed as the university webmaster than as a database administrator. The webmaster job was highly subjective with people getting upset about the tiniest of minutia that almost no one would notice. “Move this 5 pixels to the left.” “The color in the logo is FF0202 when it should be FF0303.”

Semantic drain in this context is about the pervasiveness of jargon and how it is inventing new insider terminology for concepts that already exist. I really liked the discussion about “content” for the author became to to mean text one-way communication that has no value. It is less than journalism. A content specialist is someone who creates useless drivel.

It goes on to talk about the difficulty in seeing the end product of knowledge work. One of the things I like about working in database and application administration is having a better sense about how what I do affects others. Living in a college town and running a computer system college students use, I ran into people all the time who were impacted by my work. True, it is a lot more abstract than a plumber, but it is no more abstract than a widget maker. I should visit the Georgia Archives more so that I can better relate and understand the meaning of my work with their systems.

Reward Tracking and Product Recalls

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Stores like for us as consumers to give them a customer ID to track what it is that we are buying. Many have phone number or a card or an email address. They use this information to track our purchases and personalize their nudges for us to buy products.  There is one way they might improve customer loyalty: Recall notices.

I pay attention to the news, so I see recalls every week. But, I doubt I am seeing them all. And, I doubt that I can reliably say whether I have the recalled item. But, the store where I bought it probably does.

A couple years ago, I was in a grocery aisle mulling over what to select when a manager came through to take off the shelf something nearby. He had a scanner which told him the information about the recalled item.

What would be really cool is if the system that is telling the stores what to pull from their shelves, looks through the customer purchases and informs the customers. They could pass along the recall notice and let the customer identify the lot number the same as the store. (I knew the manager was working a recall notice because he was talking to himself.)

Thinking maybe this already exists as an opt-in, I checked the stores where we have web site accounts. Nothing. (Given these places tend to go with an opt-out model, I was not surprised.)

Friendship Placebo

Social media plays with our minds in allowing us to stay connected to old friendships. We feel like we are maintaining the relationship. But, it lacks something.

Social media tends to bring out our worst. We portray ourselves at our best. We compare our worst to others’ best. Assumptions, gossip, and negativity abound.

It really isn’t a friendship anymore. But, we still want it to be. So, like a placebo we trick ourselves into thinking it fulfills that hole in our soul.