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.

Philosopher of technology Yuk Hui introduces ideas from his new book developing political thought to address today's planetary crises. Talk held at Birkbeck, University of London 1 Nov 2024. Talk followed by dialogue with Joel McKim, Director of the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology.

Yuk Hui, professor of philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, returns to Birkbeck to speak about the ideas developed in his soon to be published book Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking (University of Minnesota Press, 2024).

What is "planetary thinking" today? Arguing that a new approach is urgently needed, Yuk Hui develops a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts.

Event sposored by the Vasari Reserch Centre for Art and Technology and the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN).

In this episode we speak with Aylish Wood, Professor Emerita in Animation and Film Studies at the University of Kent. Aylish is a pioneering figure in the study of digital animation and 3D imaging software. She is the author of Software, Animation and the Moving Image: What’s in the Box?, a study of how animation and visualization artists enter into complex negotiations with software packages like Autodesk Maya. Aylish’s work attempts to get behind the surface of digital animation and considers the “performative materiality” of the generative algorithms used to create digital visual culture.

The interview for this episode was recorded in August 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: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/vasa…gy/id1494065021

To listen or subscribe via Spotify, visit:

open.spotify.com/show/6JnV9RJc4QS50kMDKBBFHm

In this episode, we speak with Sam Kinsley, Senior Lecturer in Human Geographies at the University of Exeter, in Devon, England, and the inaugural Co-Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal Digital Geography & Society. Sam is interested in spatialities and geographical imaginations of technology and the future; about how our situated existence is inherently technical, as well as the stories we tell about technologies in our daily lives. He is a close interpreter, and occasional translator, of the work of late French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. So we took the opportunity to ask Sam about his own work, as well as Stiegler’s writing, and how it might be a way to step back and think through how and why we might think about digital data, and the systems through which data are collected and mobilised, as ‘industrial-scale’ systems of memory.

The interview for this episode was recorded in July 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: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/vasa…gy/id1494065021

To listen or subscribe via Spotify, visit:

open.spotify.com/show/6JnV9RJc4QS50kMDKBBFHm

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

In this episode we speak with Paula Bialski, Associated Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Paula’s research focuses on the impact of digital media on working cultures, communication and the concept of intimacy. In this podcast we discuss her current book project entitled Slow Software which is based on a two-year ethnographic study examining the operating modes and workplace cultures of software companies in Berlin. Paula’s ethnographic methods bring the human body and concepts like exhaustion or friendship into the mix as sometimes overlooked elements of digital materiality.

The interview for this episode was recorded in November 2018.

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

In this episode of Data Materiality, we speak with Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research, New York City, USA. Shannon’s work spans a very wide range of topics – from archives and libraries to the deep histories of media infrastructures and the city. Our interview ranged from Shannon’s recent essay on the narratives surrounding 5G technologies, to her explorations of media, materiality, time and city. We not only speak about these topics as arenas of her research, but also as things that have often taken root and shape through Shannon’s teaching, pedagogy and exchanges with students.

The interview for this episode was recorded in May 2019

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Clean Soul" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://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/data-materiality-episode-2-shannon-mattern-on-5g-media/id1494065021?i=1000461854332

To listen or subscribe via Spotify, visit:

https://open.spotify.com/show/6JnV9RJc4QS50kMDKBBFHm

In this episode of Data Materiality, we speak with Vicki Mayer, Professor of Communication at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. Vicki’s research on media production and consumption – and its relationships with economic and political transformations in the media and creative industries – is well known. In our chat we speak about her field research on the arrival of Google to a remote corner of the Netherlands, where the tech giant is building Western Europe’s largest data centre. Not only does Vicki provide a compelling peek into the peculiar places that data centres are, but also how they (particularly Google data centres) might be seen as sites of aura as well. This gives rise to questions about power in the contemporary era, not to mention whether data centres really provide the economic benefits they so often promise.

The interview for this episode was recorded in June 2018

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Clean Soul" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://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/data-materiality-episode-1-vicki-mayer-on-data-centres/id1494065021?i=1000461854331

To listen or subscribe via Spotify, visit:

https://open.spotify.com/show/6JnV9RJc4QS50kMDKBBFHm