Ian Mulvany

April 29, 2021

Where is "the business"?

Entire world-views are at work within words. Have you ever undertaken gig employment, participated in the sharing economy or used cloud computing? Would you feel differently about doing these things if they were described as insecure temporary labour, largely unregulated online asset-sweating or massive bunkers full of servers?

Perhaps most importantly of all, we need to beware the assumption that humans and machines necessarily exist in some kind of competition; or that they have intentions towards us in anything like the human sense.

The language we use shapes the way we speak of, and interact with the world. 

One thing I hate, inside of a company, is conversations where I am asked "what does the business want?", as if it is some overseeing entity with its own drivers and motivations. The business is us, we are what shape it. What do we want? What do we want to accomplish? 

About Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!