Praise for Purpose - Not Technology

Society has its fun with its stereotypes. Let's take "nerds" for example, or "techies" or [insert another ridiculous synonym for engineers here] as they are often referred to by business people. Yeah, the "techies" and the "business people" - a clash of cultures, already emerging at university. Why is that? If I have learned one thing from the business side, then it would be this: Technology must always serve a purpose. Kind of obvious, right? Not quite.

Only a few decades ago, nerds and techies were considered to be one of the fringe groups of society - now, it appears that they have taken over - nerds have virtually become the Hipsters of Digitalization. TECH is everywhere - in our smartphones, our smartwatches, our smartrefrigerators and our smarttoasters - don't miss out on being smart - get yourself some more TECH stuff - woohoo! Here we are: Technology has become a self-purpose in our society.

Being myself a "techie" and just being myself (like "who I am"), I'd like to play the advocatus diaboli (yeah, that's right - it's Latin for devil's advocate ;-) regarding this special topic.

Have you ever heard a nerd friend of yours telling you "I really like technology XYZ because it can do A,B,C - that's so cool!"? I mean this argument is basically sounding like the famous Rambo III quote:

Hamid: What's that?
Rambo: It's blue light.
Hamid: What does it do?
Rambo: It turns blue.

I mean isn't that super-obvious? At this point, I always keep asking: And what good is it? What purpose does it serve? How can we use it to actually help people? Sadly, less and less people are still able to answer these questions.

I will get into the Digital Purgatory for writing this, but honestly: Technology, mathematical procedures, theories - basically all the stuff nerds are so into - are just means to an end. I do not consider them ends in themselves. Yes, you can really be excited about these topics and they can give you a hobby, maybe even a occupation in life - but let's face it: They are tools created to ultimately serve one purpose: Creating value.

Value? So we are all slaves to this thing called "capitalism"? Wait. When I refer to "value", I mean a contribution to mankind, not filling the pockets of rich people. Making money for the sake of making money or using technology for the sake of using technology are two self-purposes that do not seem to be mutually exclusive in this mad IT world!

There are a lot of IT and tech guys that are proposing to adapt new technology, just because... we can do it, because everybody does it. They have become slaves to technology, to their own tools. They lost the bigger picture: Technology is here to help us. It is not a religion - funny though that some people even call themselves "technology evangelists" - just google the term if you don't believe me :-)

In other words: Technology has become the ultimate "hammer", but instead of aiming for the right "nails", we keep blindly smashing on walls - just to make some noise?!

Value has to come first. Purpose has to come first. Sad news for you "techies" out there. Wait. Why not turn this around? Why don't we stop riding the "tech hype wave" and start listening to business requirements again - first?

Let's say a client tells you "it is our goal to achieve 1,2,3 - how can we do that?" And now you pick up on the how and tell her or him why it would be so cool to use technology XYZ to achieve 1,2,3 in the best way. The result? Both, business and IT are happy.

For me, this is the one thing that gets me going as an IT consultant- if there is value to be created, if there is purpose rather than self-purpose, if I know that I can deploy a certain technology to fix a certain problem, to improve things.

Cross out the self in self-purpose and start to deliver value, not technology.

If you really burn for what you are doing as an engineer: Stop being fanatic about TECH, start being fanatic about purpose!

Why > How.

About me

Hi there, it’s really nice to be back. Still a mid-twenties guy trying to make his way through the blogosphere by sharing some of his less crazy thoughts! Hope you can enjoy it.

As a student of Computer Science, I had to learn this lesson the hard way myself - this is why I can only stress it again and again. TECH is here to serve. We are not here to serve TECH. Don't get me wrong guys, I love all the cool tools and stuff we can use today to develop awesome IT solutions and I can only encourage you to use all this stuff wisely.

I hope I can keep up with that promise myself. :-)

Sven