Adam Keys is Thinking

Some of the most villified companies are poorly regarded because of the way they treat their own customers. Think about people complaining about AT&T’s service in New York City or people put on hold for hours by their electric company during a power disruption. Instead of treating these problems as real, telephone and electrical companies treat them as items in a queue to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

And thus, systems are set up that put a premium on throughput. Rewards are given to those who prevent customers from taking the time of the real experts who might fix a problem. Glib voice menus serve as a layer of indirection before you even reach a human. Service disruptions often bear a message tantamount to saying “we know we are not giving you the service we promised, buzz off and wait until we manage to fix it.”

Despite all this, sometimes you come upon a real jewel. Someone who really helps you, who cares about what’s going on. That special person who doesn’t care so much about their average call time, but who takes the time to get you to a happy place.

These are good actors working within a rotten system; kindly cogs in a vicious machine. I could call up AT&T and talk to any number of nice, well-meaning and empathetic people. Sometimes they are empowered and can fix the problem I face. Just as frequently, they want to help but the system they operate in prevents them from doing so, either because it would take too much time or because it is deemed too expensive to put the decision in the hands of those answering the phones.

When I describe them as cogs, it’s almost literal. Though manufacturing in the US is in serious decline, manufacturing-style management is not. Managers routinely and without irony describe people they might hire as “resources” that they can “utilize”. If there were a machine that could pop out customers whose problems had been resolved, managers would “utilize” those “resources” in the same way. Indeed, the majority of information systems attempt to do just this.

My point is that we regard a company like AT&T, Microsoft, Walmart, or Coca-Cola as a homogenous thing with its own will, priorities, and personality. But companies aren’t homogenous, because people aren’t.

Here’s to those kindly cogs. Thanks for making our interactions with these unpleasant behemoths just a little less daunting.

I was thinking about the sorts of personal sites I’ve enjoyed on the web. They roughly fall into two sorts, roughly dividing “website”-ish websites from “weblog”-ish websites.

h2. Websites

These are often a handful of pages, at most a dozen.

• Landing page - These sites give you a little bit of biographical info, maybe a page or two on specific points of interest. They rarely link to any other web presences.
• Personal ecosystem - These sites serve as a trampoline to send you to other sites representing the person’s online personality. c.f. Pat Nakajima or Merlin Mann.
• Collection of works - These sites are, essentially, portfolios. They show off the cool things the person has done.

h2. Weblogs

Chunks of content in reverse chronological listing, time and taxonomy-based archives. Sometimes comments, sometimes no. Usually a few other pages for the “potpurri”.

• The “Classic” weblog - Writing on some focused topic or a cluster of topics. Sometimes they are a cult of personality, sometimes it’s just a person’s dedication to an idea. c.f. Daring Fireball, Garrett Dimon
• Curated text - Interesting bits found on the web, aggregated and summarized. Usually higher volume than a classic weblog, but not as bad as a “professional” weblog. Always focused around the author’s personal fascinations. c.f. Kottke
• Curated links - Just a collection of links, followed by a few words describing them. c.f. Trivium
• Tumblelog - Another sort of curation, this time with little or no summarization and a focus on a tone, subject or personality. c.f. Projectionist, Ideas for Dozens (tiny)
• Lifestream - An aggregation of the author’s activities online. Like the personal ecosystem, but without the lazy linking. c.f. Adactio Elsewhere

My personal site (hint: you’re reading it) will probably continue to evolve to include a little of each of these.

Matt Lyon asks, “What’s the cure for tab-itis”? I’ll share the answer with everyone.

Long term, develop a severe aversion to too many tabs. Short term, burn it to the ground. If you really need it, you’ll find it again.

This solution works for many things: apps in your menubar, apps in your Dock, tabs in your (Twitter, email, newsreader, etc.) folders on your Desktop, etc; anything that gets cluttered when you indulge your NADD(nerd attention deficit disorder).

Letting go of your short term stress that “OMG there might be something awesome in there” is a poor trade for long-term relaxation. Awesome will find you.