(2023-10-13) Hon S16e14 The Torment Nexus Section Rfps

Dan Hon: s16e14: The Torment Nexus Section; RFPs, man. RFPs. Registration is now open for Hallway Track 002 Journalism, News, and Federated Social Networks.

1.1 The Torment Nexus Section

These are the kinds of things that pop into my head at the intersection of "oh no, this would be horrible" and "horrible because they are on some level plausible". Mostly they're fake headlines or quotes.... Microsoft Team demos Discord-First Document and Spreadsheet Collaboration, in Latest Shift towards Gen Z and Alpha Productivity Services.

Also: those quarterly youth intelligence and trends reports from those late 90s/early 2000s research agencies that cayce pollard would do work for, but weekly, for $40/month, and for affluent/middle-class helicopter parents wanting to be best friends to their kids.
(Don't do this.)
(No, really.)

1.2 RFPs, man. RFPs.

Wired did a really interesting / horrifying story about how LLMs (automatic text generation engines and word/phrase-relationship engines) have upended the whole business of responding to RFPs, or requests for proposal, which is how really big companies ("enterprises") buy software that their employees and anyone in their sphere of influence has to use, and is not consulted on

The article is fantastic because it wonderfully illustrates how often the application of technology "solves problems" in potentially the easiest and most efficient way because it doesn't rely on anyone doing more work to do things properly.

In a way, RFPs make sense!

They are like if lawyers, who generally are supposed to help decrease the likelihood and severity of bad things happening had a party with people who don't like to spend money and met their new best friends, over-controlled people who don't like to change things because change is terrifying.

There is bullshit work on the RFP-generating end, because new specious requirements keep getting added.

You will of course have figured out that there is a bunch of bullshit work on the RFP-parsing and responding end

One submission I made, which also had to be hand-delivered by paper, and ended up being hand-delivered in a costco bulk box of hawaiian potato chips, including supporting documentation, was an eight hundred and twenty eight page PDF. And me and one person had to put it all together. (We won the work).

The story I would've pitched would be about how this is the story of humans being lazy and piling a technical "solution" onto something that arguably makes things worse or at the very least doesn't improve outcomes. (cargo cult)

It is work trying to buy or build something. As a buyer, adding more questions feels like it's reducing risk, but if you don't think properly about those questions, then they introduce inefficiency, noise, and the chance of the best or better suppliers getting through.

Ever since these automated text generation engines entered their most recent phase of hype and their rapid adoption into business, I've felt that they are a way to avoid dealing with the underlying, difficult issues of, well, business. They're a way to avoid dealing with bullshit jobs. They're a way to avoid dealing with actually putting time and thought into communication and decisions

Computing for freedom, not computing for drudgery. And the answer there is that it's always a people problem, not a tech problem. Always. (Tools For Conviviality)