Anne Truitt Zelenka

I posted a manifesto of sorts on Web Worker Daily today about the difference between the old work culture and the new one enabled by the Web. Of course, I glossed over all sorts of complexities — and a whole lot of thinking I’ve been doing on this topic. So I was a little annoyed when someone said in the comments that my argument was oversimple. Part of what’s interesting about ideas and writing is applying simple ideas that nevertheless explain and provide a platform for moving forward, even if they are subject to all sorts of caveats. At any rate, the WWD format and mission doesn’t lend itself to nuanced or academic treatments. But this blog does.

The Structure of Social Revolutions

The underlying theory I’m working from is the Kuhnian scientific revolution, where a paradigm shift occurs and then people working under the old set of principles can’t understand those working under the new ones. Thomas Kuhn focused his work on science — does it apply to social rules and dynamics?

I think it does apply to social settings, like the corporate working world. Social rules apply in a bundle, not individually. They work together to enforce a certain view of the world and a set of behaviors that aim at meeting the goals embedded in that view. They are treated as dogma by the people working under their influence — rarely questioned or changed.

In the busyness community, the received beliefs include what constitutes full-time work, what’s the standard work day, how you behave in a hierarchy (e.g., don’t go over your manager’s head), what you do if your work is done (don’t go home for God’s sake). In the burst/web-enabled community, the received beliefs include how you should connect with people, whether it’s okay to blog (absolutely), how you should advertise your availability or presence, and so forth.

Exploring Terminology

John Bedard suggested that “burst” might not be the best way of characterizing the new way of doing things. Agreed — I think that terminology may have misled the commenter who called my argument oversimplified, because it leads to a very pedestrian understanding and interpretation. That is, that there are people who work steadily and there are those who work in bursts. That leads to the obvious cry: “but I do both!”

I wasn’t saying that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are steadily busy and those who work in bursts of genius. My argument is that there are two overarching paradigms of doing knowledge work: busyness and burstyness — and I tried to characterize them in a very concrete way. Maybe it was too concrete. Let me make it clear here: bursters are still busy much of the time and the busy have bursts of inspiration.

What could we call practitioners in the burst economy? The hyperproductive? That seems too insulting to those working in the old way, as perhaps the name “the busyness economy” implies too. You need something that captures the networking, the flexible rules about when and where you work, using output instead of hours to gauge productivity, and the declarative presence. I’m not sure what term could possibly encapsulate all that. In the absence of one, we use “web worker” at WWD, obviously, but that’s not perfect because it makes too many people think it’s just web developers and web designers we’re talking about.

An aspect or perhaps the heart of the problem is that if a paradigm shift has indeed occurred then there will be some people who are just totally unable to understand the new way because their fixed mindset won’t accommodate it. This cannot be solved by terminology.

The book I’m going to write this year will deal with these issues, but in the same way that Web Worker Daily deals with these issues, in a very practical and concrete way. Can I make it compelling for those who totally get the new way, who live it every day, and at the same time for those who don’t practice it but who are intrigued by it?