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Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 03:44:34 JST Adam Greenfield

In a low-diligence culture like the UK – a term I’ll explain shortly – overlaying digital systems (like these smart meters) over the processes of everyday life results not in efficiency or productivity gains, but in just the opposite: compounded failures that take extra time, effort and resource to correct. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/26/smart-meter-rollout-number-faulty-machines-leaps-great-britain
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  New blow to British smart meter rollout as number of faulty machines leaps to 4m
  
  from https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jack-simpson
  
  Fears of overcharging on bill grows after jump from 2.7m machines is blamed on reporting errors from energy providers
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 03:52:29 JST Adam Greenfield
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  Here’s what I mean by “low-diligence”: Of the five cultures I’ve lived in as an adult, the American, Japanese, Korean and Finnish in addition to that of the British Isles, the UK is on the lower end of the scale in terms of the care and attention to detail people bring to bear on everyday tasks. As we’ve discussed before, this is true across classes, backgrounds and occupational sectors here. It’s true in the NHS, in the academy, in the trades and above all in business. I can’t explain it –
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 03:57:39 JST Adam Greenfield
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  I only observe it. People you rely on for important things lose critical documents. A task that you’d expect to be done right the first time needs to be redone and then redone again. The wrong kind of emulsion is specified, or the financial support is deposited in someone else’s account, or the wrong form is filed, or the referral is lost in the mail. (These are all real examples from the past year of my life.) And when you layer brittle, overspecified and inflexible digital processes over this
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:03:17 JST Adam Greenfield
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  rather slapdash comedy of errors, the result is not improved accuracy or streamlined process flow. It’s a new and supervening set of faulty readings, with its own particular kind of plausibility and authority, that people must somehow summon the energy to challenge and counter. Occasionally, this has literally lethal effects - if you do not live in the UK, prepare to be shocked speechless by the Post Office/Fujitsu scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
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    British Post Office scandal
    
    The British Post Office scandal, sometimes called the Horizon IT scandal, arose from faulty software, provided by Fujitsu and known as Horizon, creating false shortfalls in the accounts of thousands of subpostmasters. It has been described as one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British history. Between 1999 and 2015, over 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover Horizon shortfalls with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts and bankruptcies, took a heavy toll on the victims and their families, leading to stress, illness, family breakdown, and at least four suicides. Although many subpostmasters had reported problems with the new software, the Post Office insisted that Horizon was robust and failed to disclose its knowledge of faults in the system while securing convictions. In 2009, Computer Weekly broke...
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  Luis Villa (luis_in_brief@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:04:17 JST Luis Villa
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  @adamgreenfield (as soon as you made the first toot, I immediately thought of this. unconscionable.)
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:07:54 JST Adam Greenfield
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  Sure, some of this can be accounted for by the deskilling, outsourcing, shoddy lowest-bidder automation and responsibilization that are part and parcel of neoliberal governance/management/governmentality. But much of it feels deep to the culture, in a way that absconds from awareness or visibility. And I don’t, actually, want to bellyache about this state of affairs: I would like to find some ways for us to *do* something about it together. But it’s daunting, “vaster than empires and more slow.”
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:11:57 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - gardenpeach
  @gardenpeach Japan is the most diligent, but the least flexible: you cannot put raisins or shaved coconut in curry rice, because “curry rice does not have raisins or coconut in it.” Korea is a relatively low-diligence society – everything is ppali-ppali, “hurry hurry” – but it’s buffered by a high degree of flexibility, adaptability and the expectation that you and a service provider will negotiate a modus vivendi.
  
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  gardenpeach (gardenpeach@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:11:58 JST gardenpeach
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  @adamgreenfield I'd be so interested to hear more about how these 5 cultures compare to one another. Which is the most high diligence?
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:14:20 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - gardenpeach
  @gardenpeach Finland is higher diligence, but stoic about defaults and shortfalls in a way that approaches the British. When people fuck up (and Finns generally assume they will, because people and life are disappointing), you’re just supposed to tough it out with lots of sisu and perkele. For all its many faults, and barring only its addiction to litigiousness, American culture actually balances these qualities reasonably well.
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:23:25 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - gardenpeach
  @gardenpeach But maybe I actually prefer the Korean way? Like you can get a pair of prescription glasses made, same day, and even when the prescription’s complicated, for something like fifty bucks. They might not be Zeiss quality, but honestly, if they’re not, I can’t tell the difference (and while I’m not an expert, I’m the kind of person who would). There’s a kind of cheap-and-cheerful, LFG-ness to a lot of everyday process. The *flipside* is terrible, though -
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:25:08 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - gardenpeach
  @gardenpeach things like the Sewol ferry disaster or the collapse of the Sampoong department store, where the systems and processes that a higher-diligence society would insist on being observed have just been blithely circumvented, at awful cost.
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:33:01 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - Sara Joy :happy_pepper:
  @sarajw I am sorry, I didn’t want to be one of those insufferable “everything’s better in the States” people. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve thrown in our lot here. We’re on Shite Island for good!
  
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  Sara Joy :happy_pepper: (sarajw@front-end.social)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:33:02 JST Sara Joy :happy_pepper:
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  @adamgreenfield ugh I've read the thread and my British side wants to rail against it - but I can't.
  
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  Frank T (franktaber@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:51:48 JST Frank T
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  @adamgreenfield If you had to guess what might create a low diligence or high diligence culture?
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:51:48 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - Frank T
  @franktaber Early childhood education, or more frankly conditioning, and what is praised, rewarded and encouraged (or conversely singled out for disapproval and punishment) in the highly neuroplastic years of early life. A certain amount of canny observation, as well, of the similar gradients obtaining in adult life. Even language norms, e.g. I had to move to the UK to learn the term “jobsworth,” for example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobsworth
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    Jobsworth
    
    A jobsworth is a person who uses the (typically small) authority of their job in a deliberately uncooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner. It characterises one who upholds petty rules even at the expense of effectiveness or efficiency. Related concepts include malicious compliance, another passive-aggressive behavior, and micromanagement, which can impair progress through excessive focus on details and obsessive control over those one has authority over. Origin "Jobsworth" is a British colloquialism derived from the notion that something being asked of one in a work environment is too great to risk their job over, as in, "I can't do that; it's more than my job's worth." The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "A person in authority (esp. a minor official) who insists on adhering to rules and regulations or bureaucratic procedures even at the expense of common sense." Jonathon Green similarly defines "jobsworth" as "a minor factotum whose only status comes from enforcing otherwise petty regulations". It is a form of passive aggressive obstructionism, using...
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:56:02 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - Chip Butty
  @otfrom What would the difference be, in terms of kinds of questions asked or attitude taken by the interviewer?
  
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  Chip Butty (otfrom@functional.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 04:56:03 JST Chip Butty
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  @adamgreenfield that's because diligence and precision is for boffins, and no one here wants to be a boffin, and no one here wants to listen to them (I remember being really struck by that when radio 4 was interviewing my co founder - the interview started as a business one until they found out she studied maths at uni and then it weirdly switched to a boffin interview. It was so weird)
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 05:13:55 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - Em in Exile
  @Emmadrime And! And! *It’s even worse in other places* (or differently bad, but at an at-least-equal intensity).
  
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  Em in Exile (emmadrime@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 05:13:56 JST Em in Exile
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  @adamgreenfield
  We have this conversation a lot in the US about our culture's anti-intellectualism. It's poisonous and pervasive and makes so many other problems that much worse. And holy crap, the roots are deep and everywhere.
  
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  Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 05:23:07 JST Adam Greenfield
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  - Hamish
  @verbman HFS, that’s…unreal. Cheers.
  
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  Hamish (verbman@mastodon.nz)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 05:23:08 JST Hamish
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  @adamgreenfield I appreciate this focus on low diligence, for lols in a continuation of said diligence- Fujitsu are still touting their work there as a case study: https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/SVC/fs/casestudies/uk-postoffice2.pdf
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