Creole technology
The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900, by David Edgerton
Software production has got worryingly complicated, in large measure the result of applying standard strategies of industrialisation – divide and simplify – to what more often might be treated better as a craft.
In the vast workshop districts of Ghana, known as ‘magazines’, motor vehicles from the industrialised world have for decades been adapted and refitted for rugged African conditions. They can be maintained indefinitely in this new state, using only simple parts, a sophisticated improvisation that Edgerton calls ‘creolisation’. ‘At dusk,’ he writes, ‘bright intermittent light from welding illuminates streets all over the world, issuing from maintenance workshops which might also make simple equipment.’
— Edward Tenner, “A Place for Hype”, London Review of Books, 2007-05-10
Crafts are characterised by deep study and practice, small teams and relatively simple tools, well understood. The smartest programmers I know work alone and with a simple text editor and a command shell. What are the rest of us missing?