I Haven't Called Anyone a Liar: Part Two

 “it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo” (Fincher 2000)

Yesterday I wrote about a twitter exchange in which an Australian journalist wrongly tweeted that a component on a Qantas Airbus aircraft had failed, got terribly offended when I called him on it, then finally tweeted “YOU CALLED ME A LIAR!!!” (emphasis mine) before taking his bat and ball and going home. He subsequently re-wrote history so that he got to 'win' what he characterised as an 'argument'. I 'lost' because I was 'rude'!

A dildo (not your dildo).
Source: urban-knights.com

I certainly didn't call the hysterical young police officer from Redfern Local Area Command a liar, but he was in no place to be thinking logically. I was in two minds as to whether or not I'd called the Australian journalist a liar.

After giving it much thought, I have decided that I haven't called anyone a liar. Much. I think. The quote from the movie 'Fight Club' that I've opened this article with, holds the key.

I've been a professional geek for almost all of my working life. It's a variation on the N Word Privilege that permits me to call myself a geek. Don't you try it, OK!

As I've transitioned to more academic pursuits, I've developed scholarly interests that link my career in information technology to the organization theory that I now work with. In particular, my research is focused on the social and organizational characteristics of the Open Source computer Software (OSS) movement.

Just as it's not always appropriate to transition 'in real life' (IRL) etiquettes to the Internet context, cultural and linguistic mores established IRL don't always work when they're overlaid on the Internet. Like any other culture, Internet-centric cultures have their own norms, social mores, shared understandings and “ways of doing things around here” (Deal & Kennedy 1982).

A particularly important social more in the OSS movement is that the author of a particular computer program is always linked to his work. We don't, EVER, remove an author's byline from a work. If you think about that for a moment, you'll realise that this is the precise opposite of what Karl Marx said happens to people who labour under capitalism (Simon 1994).

A related and equally important social more is that problems in an author's work lie with the work, NEVER with the author. The fundamental underlying notion is that the work was created with the purest of intentions but that, for whatever reason, the work has a problem, the program has a bug, the post was a lie, “a dildo, never your dildo”.

In OSS, we appreciate the author's contribution, we acknowledge a problem, we set about fixing the problem, but we never blame the author for the problem.

Can you see where I'm going with this? I'm putting it that the tweet was a lie, but the author of the tweet is not a liar.

I haven't called anyone a liar.

Works Cited

Deal, T & Kennedy, A 1982, Corporate cultures : the rites and rituals of corporate life, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Reading Mass.

Fincher, D 2000, Fight Club, 20th Century Fox.

Simon, L 1994, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Hacket, Indiana.