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.
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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.
Data Materiality Episode 6: Aylish Wood on Animation and the Materialities of Generative Algorithms
Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology
44 minutes 3 seconds
2 years ago
Data Materiality Episode 6: Aylish Wood on Animation and the Materialities of Generative Algorithms
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
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Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology
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.
