#3. The KLF do feedback, Amazon APIs
Plus Zeynep, Hot Milk, Schitt's Creek, casarecce
Hello!
I’ve got work lined up from February which is a relief. It’s a platform problem and my brain’s already whirring. In the meantime I’m working with an old friend on her startup. This week I’ve been sketching high level concepts and it reminds me how different thinking is when you’re drawing things.
My highlight of the last week has been pre-dawn rides around Hackney Marshes. I’m not an exerciser so this habit is a big deal. It’s also special having 40 minutes with my brother - who lives close by - every morning.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about this week…
The KLF do feedback
Last week I read The Manual: how to have a number one the easy way which was written by the KLF in 1988. Active voice, short sentences, direct, funny, timeless. It’s both tongue-in-cheek (they know that having a number one is pointless) and dead serious (the bits on hiring a studio are some of the best demystification-writing I’ve ever read about music technology). The whole thing is a readable gem.
Anyway, my favourite is where they talk about dealing with feedback:
“Between you sipping this cup of tea and getting to Number One you are going to be involved with a lot of people along the way and from all these people you can learn a lot. Whether they are just a tea boy or an international super star you bump into down at TV Centre while doing Top of the Pops, everybody involved in this music game has some sort of insight or angle on it all. Listen to what they all have to say but take nothing as gospel; you are going to have to start building up your own picture of how it all moves.”
The bolded bit nails what so many people get wrong about feedback:
“Listen to what they all have to say”. You can’t assume you know better than someone based on who they are. You never know who’s going to wake you up to something. It’s wise to be humble, respectful, open, and actually listen to people. We talk about feedback being a gift but how many people listen properly?
“Take nothing as gospel”. Just because you listen to everyone doesn’t mean you have to take what they say seriously! I think one reason people avoid feedback is because they think that - having heard it - they have to act on it. Wildly untrue. You are in charge of your own thought processes.
“Start building up your own picture of how it all moves”. This is the magic part! It’s impossible to work out what feedback to listen to and what to ignore if you don’t have a working model in your mind of how things work. Yes, the map is not the territory. Yes, all models are wrong. But some maps and models are useful.
So the KLF are now my go-to quote for explaining why people need to listen, why not to act blindly on everything, and why building your own understanding matters more than accepting second-hand knowledge. This makes me smile.
(If you haven’t read the John Higgs KLF book then please read it.)
Amazon APIs
I went back to Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant that I first read a decade ago. It includes the most interesting thing that I ever learned about Amazon.
(I know. Amazon is a monster. But remember - the KLF tell us to listen to everyone from tea boys to international superstars and that includes tech billionaires…as long as we don’t take everything they say as gospel etc).
The gist is that in the 2000s Jeff Bezos issued a dictat that Amazon teams were not allowed to talk to each other. Instead they had to write an API - a way for computers to talk to each other - for their team’s work (e.g. search, product listings, reviews etc). They had to document the API and make it available for other teams in Amazon to use. Then teams would only interact with each other through their APIs.
I’m not so interested in the technical stuff. Others know that better than me.
I’m interested in the communication stuff though. I’ve worked in big organisations, and I’ve worked in small organisations that grew fast, and communication gets ugly. As you add more people (2, 3, 4, 5 etc) the potential communication pathways grow faster than the people (1, 3, 6, 10 etc). With 100 people there are 5,000 options. With 1,000 people there are 500,000 options. No one can stay on top of this. Silos, cliques, power struggles and hierarchies emerge. I wonder if teams talking to each via documented APIs (written culture!) might avoid some of this.
I’m also interested in the innovation case. Simon Wardley and Wardley mapping says that technologies turn into commodities over time and then future inventors make new technologies on top of the old ones. Like electricity > computers > internet > Google translate. My guess is that by forcing teams to communicate using APIs Amazon was pushing them from novel/custom technologies (only the immediate team could use) to product/commodity technologies (any team with access to the API could use). Teams all across Amazon could innovate off the back of other teams’ work without talking to anyone. Actually, not just teams in Amazon, because soon Amazon Web Services (AWS) become a commodity for the whole internet.
Why do I care about this weird stuff? Because I’ve worked in the UK civil service and it struggles with both communication and innovation. It’s a big organisation full of silos and hierarchies. It’s not easy to build new things on top of commodity technologies because things are hidden in dusty corners. We did some interesting things with APIs on Government as a Platform at GDS - like GOV.UK Notify - but we barely scratched the surface.
I’m thinking about those kinds of things again. Watch out!
Zeynep vs moral outrage
I’ve loved reading Zeynep Tufekci ever since Dan Hon included her in a list of people to follow at the end of No One’s Coming. It’s up to us (this post also introduced me to Rachel Coldicutt, Stacy-Marie Ishmael and Jay Owens and has a special place in my heart for being such a classy/useful attribution).
Zeynep writes about a mix of science and sociology with great clarity and has a critical perspective outside the usual camps. She called the pandemic early and advocated for facemasks when the WHO were still denying their usefulness. In December she wrote a piece about coups drawing on her Turkish experience. She. Is. Timely.
She wrote recently about a New York Times headline (“Britain Opts for Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Confounding Experts”) that prompted outrage but later turned out to be inaccurate and inflammatory. She used this to make a wider point:
“We’ve increasingly lost the ability to interpret even the smallest things outside of frameworks of outrage.”
I worry a lot about our society sleepwalking into socio-technical systems that reward outrage. Social media platforms and their dumb engagement algorithms that amplify the black-and-white thinking that generates likes. ‘Serious’ papers like The Guardian and The Telegraph being swallowed whole by opinion columnists writing headlines to maximise views by appealing to their readers’ confirmation biases.
But I worry more that we always think it’s other people that fall prey to these systems. We even get outraged that other people are being manipulated into…outrage.
Zeynep thinks critically and writes clearly but is rarely outraged. I like this.
Reading
Holly told me to read Hot Milk by Deborah Levy and she was right. It’s about a young woman and her relationship to the outside world. It’s got that kind of stream-of-consciousness vibe from Mrs Dalloway but also it's laugh-out-loud funny at points. Like, the woman is an anthropologist and is always thinking of things that would be good field studies and doing nothing about them. A bit like me with blog posts.
Watching
I’ve been watching Schitt’s Creek and I’m hooked. It sounds weird to say but my favourite bits are the pauses and facial expressions. Charming and subtle and funny. I struggle to work out which character is my favourite (maybe Alexis?) and it does a nice thing where all the characters exceed your expectations. Naomi Alderman put me onto it but also said that it doesn’t get going until the middle of season two so I’ll pass that on because I agree. Definitely helping me through lockdown.
Cooking
Another week another new pasta shape. This time casarecce which is a bit like a fusilli that has lost most of its twist - and a wholewheat version from Garofalo at that! Exciting when you live with a type one diabetic and need those slow-release carbs. I made it with broccoli, anchovies, garlic and chilli which is my go-to comfort food.
Trying to get this out on Wednesday has made me stay up too late. Need to rethink this for next week. But it’s marking the weeks that are all a bit samey otherwise.
Stay safe.
Will