I remember my parents as being light drinkers. One beer at a Saturday barbecue would be typical. I never thought too much about it, even as my peers began their introductions to alcohol.
Extended families became a larger element of my environment when we moved to St.Louis, where my mother’s siblings and their children all lived. Dad’s family was back East and weren’t part of my life. While it was never a specific topic of discussion, I eventually pieced together that my father’s move west was a very deliberate act. His two older brothers and his twin brother were all essentially functional alcoholics. Leaving that environment was his plan to avoid the same fate.
I think this must be one of the seeds of my sensitivity to context and the environment. The environment–social, organizational, physical–sets boundaries on what is easy and what is hard. And history shapes the environment.
Technology pretends to be ahistorical. We are here now and the future looks bright. There is nothing to be gained by wondering how we got here; press on.
Organizations are all about history. Jerry Weinberg was fond of reducing his insights into aphorisms or laws. There’s one he attributes to economist Ken Boulding;
Things are the way they are because they got that way
Understanding how things “got that way” is a necessary step to making things better. And that is true for organizations, technology, and their intersection.
[There’s a reason for the woodpecker but that is for another day]