My favorite aspect of this episode is not necessarily what I liked about the podcast series. The best part of hearing these shows over the years was the way a certain observation would reappear over and over across various stories - eventually, each story reached a point where it implied that the internet is not much different from the other tools in our lives. The specific details unique to highly unusual episodes might challenge this conclusion from time to time, but for the most part it seemed to me that the show confirmed how the internet is merely a digital substitute for what could otherwise happen in the physical world. Given that it is a substitute - meaning the results of using it are mostly interchangeable with the alternative - then the decision to use the technology comes down to factors such as speed, accuracy, or ease of use (which always favors the internet). Think about TOA as an example - I could distribute this as a print newsletter, but would it be a great use of time to ship "proper admin" to home addresses? The main lessons I've drawn from years of listening to these shows feel similar to those a dedicated bookworm could have drawn up in 1995 - that we humans are starved for connection, ready to build new communities around our interests, and almost always too shy to bring up life's biggest questions until we sense an added layer of safety.
The previous paragraph might seem like I'm just stating the obvious, but it leads me to an idea - the fact of the internet being faster, more accurate, or easier to use is often provided as the explanation for regarding the internet as an unambiguous improvement, at least in the sense that results improve by substituting the internet for the in-person alternative. This is like suggesting the view from a particular mountaintop would improve if someone cleared the trail leading to the summit, or that a sandwich tastes better because you cut it with a sharper knife. The challenge with my TOA example from above is separating the process of collecting, distributing, and posting from the end product. It's certainly an improvement to rely on the internet for much of the process, but it's not so clear to me if having TOA on the internet has made me a better writer.
The logical question that results from this thinking is something I've wondered about "The Takeover" - if the process improvements can make it seem like the outcome improved, then is it possible for process improvements to actually hide a situation where the outcome has been made worse? It's like the hypermiling driver whose obsession with fuel efficiency means he never arrives on-time. My thought about this podcast episode is that although the internet seems to improve the learning process, there are certain instances where these process improvements obscure how some situations are ill-suited for the digital classroom. The subject of this story is essentially using an internet substitute to mock an aspect of a particular in-person culture, which he understands well enough to parody yet hasn't connected to any larger explanation that could clarify why this culture exists in the first place. I think this failure is partly reflected in the way he seems to consider the web-based elements enabled by his project as sufficient for a full recreation of the culture - what happens within the group is a truthful rendition of the culture, but outside its original in-person context the digital participant misses the point.
It would be a different story if this had happened two decades ago, where the subject could have rounded up some friends and pretended to work in a company for the purpose of mocking corporate culture. But what would happen next? I think it would become pretty clear that any person who wasn't participating in the silly premise would be detracting from the group, and this person would soon be asked to stop playing the game. But isn't this what happens in the corporate office when a colleague refuses to participate in the culture? The point isn't so much that the iguana joke is stupid, the point is that the joke signals who wants to be part of the team. The digital parody could never capture this insight because there is no pressure to keep anyone in the group, but I think it would have been different if he had tried this in-person. I'm not sure if the subject would have necessarily learned this lesson just by trying this experiment outside the digital setting, but it seems to me that he at least would have stood a chance.
The revelation about corporate culture is that there is a certain safety in numbers, particularly when the consequences of sticking out at work can be devastating in terms of both professional reputation as well as personal finances. I suppose you can learn this in one of two ways - either you are in a setting where you felt the power of that safety, or you listened to the end of "The Takeover" and appreciated the irony. It's not clear to me if the subject recognized the connection between his rejection of the culture and his eventual demise, or if he bothered with a logical follow up question to his initial idea - if this culture is so stupid, so banal, then why do so many otherwise intelligent people tolerate it? I think the way the story ends gives us a look at one answer to this question, where colleagues rely on strength in numbers to protect themselves - not from any visible, stated, or obvious threat, but from that ever-present reality of the relentless, grinding gears that chew up so many isolated corporate employees.
