Design your infrastructure or your infrastructure will design you
The groundwork and infrastructure we set for our services can define their future for years to come.
Technology policy expert Maria Farrell and computer scientist Robin Berjon sum the impact of infrastructure on our services in their essay, titled We Need To Rewild The Internet.
‘Whoever controls infrastructure determines the future,’ it says…
‘If you doubt that, consider that in Europe we’re still using roads and living in towns and cities the Roman Empire mapped out 2,000 years ago.’
It’s the same reason why film frame rates vary in different countries, depending on the electrical power frequency (and therefore lightbulb flicker rates) and why A4 paper is rightly the same size as the velum from a lamb’s back.
Despite this, when trying to fix services, we’re often kept at arm’s length from infrastructure used to run those services. Anyone keeping an eye on news stories containing some variation of ‘technology outage causes Big Famous Company to close/stop sales etc’ will have noticed that the number of technology outages has grown exponentially in recent years. There are a lot of reasons for this; not understanding our materials is an important one.
We make mistakes when we separate ourselves from the materials that make up our services. Mistakes like using the wrong supplier or simply not knowing how to maintain those materials over time. This leads to outages, unknown security risks, and having to get people out of retirement to maintain long-dead coding languages. Outsourced technologies are often the only viable option for organisations, but the hands off relationship we have with them is problematic, and can lead to ‘de-skilling’ impact on us, and a habit of being ‘out of sight out of mind’.
This is perfectly exemplified by the common phrase ‘nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft’. We might think this phrase came about with the domination of Microsoft in the 90s, but it has an older origin.
First coined in the 1980s, the phrase was originally ‘nobody gets fired for buying IBM’. This seamless shift from one global tech behemoth to the next tells us how we viewed technology choices then, and how we still do: with trepidation, caution and the kind of extreme risk aversion that comes from being dangerously disconnected from the materials we use to build our services.
Is outsourcing our infrastructure a bad thing? Absolutely not. Is doing it in a way that we become disconnected with how it works and impacts our service? Yes.
‘Legacy’ technology is a permanent fixture of fixing services. We are always encountering a roman road or a long-lost database. So, what’s the solution? Consciously engage with how technology works at all levels, and build a culture where we don't see it as ‘mere details’ for someone else to handle
If your organisation is struggling with a detachment to the material it used to deliver your services, you can start simply by mapping what that technology actually is, find who owns it and understand what it can and can't do. For more thoughts on how to do this and bring your organisation along with you on a journey of reconnecting with materials, check out Bad Services, out now
We make mistakes when we separate ourselves from the materials that make up our services. Mistakes like using the wrong supplier or simply not knowing how to maintain those materials over time. This leads to outages, unknown security risks, and having to get people out of retirement to maintain outdated coding languages. Outsourced technologies are often the only viable option for organisations, but the hands off relationship we have with them is problematic, and can lead to ‘de-skilling’ impact on us, and a habit of being ‘out of sight out of mind’.
This is perfectly exemplified by the common phrase ‘nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft’. We might think this phrase came about with the domination of Microsoft in the 90s, but it has an older origin.
First coined in the 1980s, the phrase was originally ‘nobody gets fired for buying IBM’. This seamless shift from one global tech behemoth to the next tells us how we viewed technology choices then, and how we still do: with trepidation, caution and the kind of extreme risk aversion that comes from being dangerously disconnected from the materials we use to build our services.
Is outsourcing our infrastructure a bad thing? Absolutely not. Is doing it in a way that we become disconnected with how it works and impacts our service? Yes.
‘Legacy’ technology is a permanent fixture of fixing services.
We are always encountering a roman road or a long-lost database. So, what’s the solution? Consciously engage with how technology works at all levels, and build a culture where we don't see it as ‘mere details’ for someone else to handle.
If your organisation is struggling with a detachment to the material it used to deliver your services, you can start simply by mapping what that technology actually is, find who owns it and understand what it can and can't do.
For more thoughts on how to do this and bring your organisation along with you on a journey of reconnecting with materials, check out Bad Services, out now