Engineering Open Societies

Or tilting at windmills, you decide

What are we doing here?

That is a hell of a good question.

Hi, I'm Asa, I think about how to build software, a lot, and this is Engineering Open Societies.

This newsletter is based on two primary ideas.

1. Open societies can and must become more robust, more modern, and more responsive if they are to survive and help humanity reach its potential. 

2. Software engineering and allied disciplines can provide tremendous value in reaching this goal.

I started this newsletter because I wanted a place to prototype, rapidly iterate on, and optimize ideas about building, strengthening, and improving open societies using the systems and processes of software engineering with feedback from you, my reader and collaborator.

I want to be clear that what’s here is meant to spark ideation and discussion, nothing is set in stone. Let’s implement the best form of the best ideas together.

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others. George Soros

What’s the goal?

I can hear you groaning internally, not another wave of unhinged techno-futurism, he's probably going to start talking about the blockchain, decentralized ledgers, or AI governance. Fear not, dear reader.

I believe the primary, oft-overlooked value of software engineering to government is not the end result, whizzy technology, but the people, culture, and processes that have evolved to develop software systems that solve concrete problems and deliver real value. And, that it is this mix of people, culture, and process delivering solutions that can help revitalize and rejuvenate our governments, politics, and societies.

Software companies aren't made of code, much like bakeries aren't made of bread. Software companies are made of processes that produce and maintain code. Software is a by-product of these processes. It's not even the final product — it's a means to an end. The final product is a solution to a business problem. François Chollet

While we may occasionally delve into "moonshots" the primary focus of this newsletter is going to be on developing concrete proposals and business models that we can iterate on and make actionable. The ideal is that this newsletter acts as a piece of an agile development process and allows up develop lean startups. We want to iterate on, refine, and hopefully productionize the ideas presented.

This is a newsletter for foxes, not hedgehogs, there will be very few big ideas but many small ideas. The goal is agility. Small, iterative changes that can have a meaningful impact to the present.

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. Richard Feynman

But, why?

I apologize in advance as this inevitably turns into a bit of a rant. I promise you we will soon zoom back in towards presenting useful solutions but I hope it helps to present a north star for us to aim towards.

Why open societies?

I don’t want to minimize the difficulties of operating and managing a society, in many ways it is and will always be the most complex human endeavor we engage in since in a nutshell it’s the sum of operating, managing, regulating broad and diverse and diverse masses of humanity. Nor minimize how much harder the system has gotten to manage as the stakes grow ever higher and the complexity of our world grows exponentially. It’s a hard problem and one that defies simple solutions.

The difficulty of maintaining increasingly complex systems stems from the exponential increase in the number of possible interactions between the components of the system. Edsger W. Dijkstra

Open, cosmopolitan, pluralistic societies have also undoubtedly made our world better, and are far more amenable to progress and improvement than the other forms of human organization we have yet discovered. However, with each passing year, even the best-operated open societies look more and more creaky, antiquated, and poorly operated when compared to the very visible manifestations of human technologies and the complex human interactions they enable.

Drop someone from the 18th or 19th century into the modern world and they will be amazed and astonished at the progress of technology and the interconnectedness of humanity. Drop them into the halls of congress and they may struggle to discern a difference.

Civilisation is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. Arnold J. Toynbee

Even for citizens of the internet era interacting with their government often feels like a painfully anachronistic endeavor at best. Whether it be voting, receiving services, or even the fundamental processes of legislating, developing, and enacting policy.

And, with that gross and obvious disparity between current potential and reality there emerges all the demons which further weaken the system: apathy, fear, distrust, and the siren's song of the simple answers: authoritarians, demagogues, despots, and blood and soil nativists. Perhaps even more nefarious the current nature of everything with even a whiff of politics and government seems designed to be anathema to all but the most idealistic, or masochistic, of engineers and scientists.

It’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court but the modern engineer is unable to distinguish the past operation of government from the present or make any impact.

Why software engineering?

Open societies are rotting not because we want them to, but because we don’t have the correct people, culture, processes, and tools to change them. Software engineering and related disciplines I believe have these elements.

At its heart, software engineering is about managing the immense complexity of independently-governed, distributed system in an ever changing and mutable landscape, with a panoply of actors engaged in diverse activities, processes, and languages. Any of this starting to sound familiar?

Over the years, software, or really product, engineers have developed tools for creation, experimentation, and scaling that allow them to evolve rapidly in this chaotic sea of information.

The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer. Bjarne Stroustrup

Although it is easy to point to the companies that sit at the top of the technology space and imagine something that is closed, the opposite is quite true. Even these vast enterprises are fundamentally built off of openly available and constantly evolving tools and data created and maintained by an ever changing slice of humanity.

So as someone once said much better than I, what are we here to do?

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. -E.F. Schumacher

Or to put it another way, it’s time to tackle our society’s technical debt.

How is this going to go?

To start, I’m going to try and publish something every week for you to consume, discuss, and contribute to. I’m going to attempt to operate this as much as possible as a technical design doc review. I write, you provide feedback, and we iterate on the content and concepts presented.

To start with we’ll be doing a deep dive on how governments think about, procure, and build software and how this process can be rethought and improved with the goal of building a business model for a new way of building software for governments.

If you are interested in working with me please reach out to me here or on LinkedIn.

You can also find me on Twitter. And, although most of my contributions are not public, feel free to check out my GitHub.

How can you, the reader, help?

Take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. James Wilson

Help me separate the wheat from the chaff.

1. Read

2. Think

3. Comment

4. Contribute

Why this?

First, for myself, regret minimization and moonshot thinking. I have spent my career directing my energy and effort to building others' visions, which is fine, I love solving problems, building software, and building effective organizations and hope to continue to do so.

I’ve always hoped that someday I would have the skills, insight, and experience though to build or contribute to something that would make society better. I view this newsletter as a stepping stone to to that goal and I don’t want these ideas to wither on the vine unspoken.

Second, I believe there’s an opportunity here to develop potential business and projects to support open societies and I’d like to inspire and allow others to build, refine, and contribute to these ideas and their own ideas. It would be great to use something started here with a passion and a mission into something that could become a profession and a vocation i.e. Ikigai.

I am humble enough to realize, I hope, that many of these ideas will be stillborn into the present. Others may find utility in the future. And, perhaps, a very few may with some attention and polishing provide something useful today.

Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile. Life is short, craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult. Hippocrates

As I hope I’ve made clear, I view using the skills of software engineering to build better societies as something incredibly challenging and difficult.

All models are wrong; some models are useful. George E.P. Box

Thank you for bearing with me, our next post will drill down into a concrete business model for governments building software. Thank you for bearing with me while I set the stage.

Let’s develop some useful models. And don’t forget to tell me how I can make this post better.

If you want to stop here that’s fine. You’ve got all the useful information but for those interested I thought I’d share a little more of my passion.

Like many idealistic youngsters I was inspired by the The Stars my Destination.

Gully Foyle is my name

And Terra is my nation.

Deep space is my dwelling place,

The stars my destination.

And while a number of billionaires seem to have latched onto the last part. For me the inspiring part is “And Terra is my nation” building open societies together seems to be a necessary pre-requisite for everything else that comes after.

See here’s a picture of Jeff Bezos 1.0 holding a copy. Sorry, Substack suggested I include a picture.

Or for those more classically inclined.

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe

is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as

well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine

owne were; any mans death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

John Donne