Paula Bialski Lecture Good-Enoughing: Software Work Cultures at a Middle Tech Company
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Good-Enoughing: Software Work Cultures at a Middle Tech Company
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In this lecture, Paula Bialski offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings.
Paula Bialski is a Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and recently published Middle Tech: Software Work and the Culture of Good Enough at Princeton University Press (2024).
Contact name:
Joel Mckim