Book Review: Fatal Abstractions

According to Ronald Reagan, the nine most terrifying words in English are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronnie was being awfully meta since he was representing that same government and was, ostensibly, here to help. The most terrifying simile in English also became popular in the 80’s: like a business. Wherever that simile is applied, you know what comes next: worse service, layoffs, toxic work environment, poor quality products, money shoveled to the shareholders, the board, the CEO — anyone but workers. When someone says they will run the government / school / hospital “like a business”, you know it’s about to suuuuuck. 

But it sucks in a particular way that Darryl Campbell’s new book Fatal Abstraction: How the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software helps clarify. In the 21^st century, software has taken over the business of being “like a business.” Like a lot of things in our souped-up century, the technological power of software allows businesses to suck much faster and in much deadlier ways. The human element in this is what Campbell calls the managerial class.

Managerialism is the proposal that a class of MBA-carrying managers should run companies, regardless of their expertise in the product or service the company sells. That’s how, in Campbell’s most striking example, someone who had no experience building planes became the head of Boeing. Managerialism, which seems to have hit its final boss stage with our current government, dictates that outsiders who know nothing about the task at hand are better than experts in the field because they know how to manage business, i.e. raise revenue quickly and lucratively without too much attention to detail, safety, or long-term consequences. 

Where Fatal Abstraction really excels is in giving the reader a feel for the consequences of unleashing poorly understood software upon the public. Managerial logic dictates that a company can make money now and figure out the details later. When this approach results in, say, a half-finished videogame, you only get some irate gamers. Take this approach to your new jetliner, self-driving car, social media algorithm, though, and the consequences can literally lead to mass casualties: downed planes, dead pedestrians, genocide. Campbell argues that a fundamental problem is that companies like Boeing, Uber, and Facebook, are run by people who not only don’t understand the product they represent but who really don’t care what the product is as long as it keeps the shareholders happy.

A key to the success of the book is that Campbell is something of an outsider in the tech world. Though his résumé includes stints at Amazon, Uber, dating app companies, etc., his post-graduate work is in History, not Management. His journalistic flair invites the reader inside of the software’s “mind.” He recounts in devastating detail exactly what the machine was “thinking” when it decided to fly a plane into the ocean or hit a pedestrian. In this way the book is helpful to non-experts (even managers) who want to understand the promise and limitations of software, up to and including generative AI, without pursuing a computer science degree.

If Campbell (and me, for that matter) is afflicted with a sense of utopianism it is one that sees a future where tech companies, CEOs, managers, and shareholders value humanity over the bottom line. He makes a strong case that software is of great benefit but only when held to strict safety parameters, one of which must always be that humans take control in an emergency. Working in tandem, man and machine are responsible for the “miracle on the Hudson” and for a moment of grace in the Ukraine war where drones led a surrendering Russian soldier to safety. In both cases, an expert in the task at hand was aided, rather than shut out, by software.

Fatal Abstractions is a must read for anyone interested in a clear-eyed assessment of the promise and limitations of software. And for that matter, in the promise and limitations of the human beings creating the software. Software that, for better and worse, is fully integrated into our lives. Lives that are, mostly for worse, increasingly being lived “like a business.”

Thank you for reading Desire Paths. Generally speaking, this is a bi-weekly newsletter about what it means to be human in an age of technology. Occasionally, Desire Path’s managerial class unleashes something on an off-week that has not been field tested. Like, I guess, book reviews. The editorial department (housed with me here in the basement) advises that I should say that I know Darryl Campbell well enough to pre-order his book sight unseen. (He helped me edit my little e-book.) Please, pre-order books from authors you support!