How’s the Weather?
Blizzard, the ‘cloud’, and the physical / digital divide
Welcome to Turtles (all the way down!) A newsletter which seeks to explore the relationship between cultural theory and digital design.
Today’s newsletter continues on from my previous article with the Future of Work - check it out here if you haven’t already!
I recently came across an article which was discussing a topic that I, and perhaps you, have seen before.
Concerns about the definition of the ‘cloud’ as the name for remote servers, which are most commonly used to store their customer’s data, arise from the implication that a cloud connotes a kind of weightless entity. Something which is both there and not there.
A number of people, often citing ecological issues, point out how this can be a misleading description of a very much real set of computer servers that consume a considerable percentage of the Earth’s entire electrical output.
In today’s article, I want to continue to explore this idea of how the digital world touches the ‘real’ (physical) world. However, rather than exploring hardware, I want to explore digital design.
What does it mean to you?
Whenever I go to a swimming pool, the smell of the chlorine immediately takes me back to my childhood, and swim classes in primary school.
But it isn’t just the smell. It is also the blue walls, and the reflection of the water’s ripples onto them. The echoing sounds of human voices. The blurred world seen through foggy goggles.
Places we visit repeatedly become intertwined with our memory. It imbues them with new meanings, and new feelings.
For anyone who works in digital design, this is extremely important.
The Workplace
What does the professional space mean to you?
For some, it may be the usual thoughts: desks, emails, deadlines etc. But for many others, the professional space connotes exclusivity, a feeling that it is meant ‘for’ others unlike yourself. A place in which you are only invited so far into, while others are allowed to make it to the top.
And for some, to this day the professional space means a basic lack of safety, as is the case for a number of employees at Activision Blizzard. As I discussed in my previous article, Activision Blizzard have been exposed to reveal a range of professional misconduct, including but not limited to sexual harassment in their workplace.
I can’t imagine what meanings and feelings such connotations would create, but I can’t believe they would be positive. I also struggle to believe it would promote any feeling of belonging or inclusivity, far from it.
What I am curious about, is whether or not these same people bring their connotations of the workplace into the digital space as well.
For me, for you
I appreciate a Chuckle Brothers reference isn’t really appropriate for the topic of inclusivity in the workplace (my apologies to non-British readers, although I recommend giving them a search) however, sometimes an opportunity must be seized.
I opened one of my previous articles for this newsletter discussing a report a colleague and I were putting together a few months ago on the performance of a digital platform for professionals, and we were discussing some of the themes we uncovered from user surveys and focus groups.
One theme that particularly caught our attention was a widespread reporting of ‘imposter syndrome’ from respondents of a wide range of demographics.
A user experience such as imposter syndrome is a challenging issue to prove with quantitative data, because evidence for its prevalence can appear in a wide range and often disparate sets of data. This is also the case with qualitative data like the kind we were dealing with, and requires a human touch to piece together.
This perhaps goes some way to explaining why we do not see more research conducted into its prevalence in digital (and physical!) spaces, but its importance toward designing inclusive digital platforms cannot be understated.
The Digital Professional Network
Where do you think of, when you think of a digital professional network?
LinkedIn. Google. Microsoft.
A nice, clean Serif font. White background with blue highlights. A neat, but somewhat busy interface with a range of interactive elements.
Which one of the three am I describing? That’s right, it’s a trick question.
I’m very interested, and concerned, with how much of the design of the digital space has become homogenised through the rise of big tech. When we think of, and visit, digital professional networks, we are presented with essentially the same style, same functionality, and same feeling of interface.
If a certain individual was to feel in any way excluded from the professional space in the real world, who is to say they wouldn’t feel the same way in a digital professional space?
What difference is there between a swimming pool from my childhood and a swimming pool today, compared to a physical professional space and a digital one? They may be different places, but they are used in the same way.
I appreciate there is some reaching here. But I believe this is a hypothesis that deserves some further consideration.
In Conclusion
In my most recent article (in collaboration with Startup ROI - go check out Kyle O’Brien’s excellent work on French Tech if you haven’t already) I concluded the article with a look toward the future of work.
I considered how Facebook’s Horizon, their new VR platform for professional collaboration, was essentially bringing the same old workplace into the new frontier of the ‘metaverse’, and how this was a shame considering we have an opportunity to construct an entire environment from scratch.
Isn’t it worth giving some alternatives a go, at least attempting to answer some of the most persistent social issues that have plagued the workplace for far too long?
I feel that a similar consideration is due here also. The best way we can start to explore with quantifiable data whether or not the permeating exclusivity of the physical workplace is responsible for the prevailing imposter syndrome in the digital workplace is by having at least some kind of comparison.
Why don’t we give something else a go?