4 ms·

The Shirky Principle (2010)

13 points by soundsop 12y ago

jordanpg 12y ago
This is more a statement about bureaucracy than about institutions generally. I might state it as "Bureaucracies will tend to preserve the process to which they are the solution." There are lots of other reasons that technologies might become entrenched, but bureaucracies become entrenched because job security means everything for people working in non-creative or expendable positions. Or, to consider this from another angle: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  I was once flipping through channels and stumbled on the channel that records the meetings for the local government. There were people sitting on some raised platform and for 10 minutes straight they were just shuffling papers back and forth between themselves. They were quite literally paper-pushers for those 10 minutes. I laughed for a little bit and then felt really sad that this was actually my own town government. On a more technological side of things we have APIs and APIs for APIs. I have spent non-trivial amount of time trying to build something usable on top of AWS and OpenStack APIs. Same goes for various ecommerce APIs. The situation is so bad that there are entire companies built around making horrible APIs more usable. See channeladvisor and sellbrite. Horrible APIs are the equivalent of inefficient bureaucracies for programmers and quite literally keep them employed. More than once I've had the thought that if some API was more usable then I would not have a job.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
dang 12y ago
I once read something similar: "The primary function of any institution is to preserve itself, and only secondarily to do whatever it was intended for." I seem to recall that it was attributed to a founder of sociology, perhaps Durkheim or Weber, but can't remember. If anybody can trace the source I'd love to know.
- vanderZwan 12y ago
  The only time I've heard that quote is by Clay Shirky, in his first TED talk. It makes a lot of sense to me, btw - it's kind of like natural selection at the organisationa level.
- michael_nielsen 12y ago
  Just as an additional data point: I've heard something in that vein attributed to Durkheim, multiple times. Unfortunately, I do not know the source, and a cursory search doesn't turn anything up.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  This sounds a lot like it might be something from public choice economics literature. It also sounds like it might be a restatement of the anthropic principle.
avemuri 12y ago
And it creates coordination across multiple institutions. Everyone may have different solutions, but they must all preserve the same problem.

13 points by soundsop 12y ago

This is more a statement about bureaucracy than about institutions generally. I might state it as "Bureaucracies will tend to preserve the process to which they are the solution." There are lots of other reasons that technologies might become entrenched, but bureaucracies become entrenched because job security means everything for people working in non-creative or expendable positions. Or, to consider this from another angle: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

dkarapetyan 12y ago
I was once flipping through channels and stumbled on the channel that records the meetings for the local government. There were people sitting on some raised platform and for 10 minutes straight they were just shuffling papers back and forth between themselves. They were quite literally paper-pushers for those 10 minutes. I laughed for a little bit and then felt really sad that this was actually my own town government. On a more technological side of things we have APIs and APIs for APIs. I have spent non-trivial amount of time trying to build something usable on top of AWS and OpenStack APIs. Same goes for various ecommerce APIs. The situation is so bad that there are entire companies built around making horrible APIs more usable. See channeladvisor and sellbrite. Horrible APIs are the equivalent of inefficient bureaucracies for programmers and quite literally keep them employed. More than once I've had the thought that if some API was more usable then I would not have a job.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

dang 12y ago

I once read something similar: "The primary function of any institution is to preserve itself, and only secondarily to do whatever it was intended for." I seem to recall that it was attributed to a founder of sociology, perhaps Durkheim or Weber, but can't remember. If anybody can trace the source I'd love to know.

vanderZwan 12y ago
The only time I've heard that quote is by Clay Shirky, in his first TED talk. It makes a lot of sense to me, btw - it's kind of like natural selection at the organisationa level.
michael_nielsen 12y ago
Just as an additional data point: I've heard something in that vein attributed to Durkheim, multiple times. Unfortunately, I do not know the source, and a cursory search doesn't turn anything up.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
This sounds a lot like it might be something from public choice economics literature. It also sounds like it might be a restatement of the anthropic principle.

avemuri 12y ago

And it creates coordination across multiple institutions. Everyone may have different solutions, but they must all preserve the same problem.