The Purpose Isn’t What It Does

“The purpose of a system is what it does.” Such a neat little turn of phrase; it makes you sound wise and cynical and like a person who sees through things. But it’s mostly wrong and almost always counterproductive.

A bit of background; the phrase (and let’s just say “POSIWID”) was coined in 1979 by a British management consultant. It’s thrown around heavily; a search on my Mastodon server turns up plenty of examples. Most of which, instructively, are lightweight arm-waving. Try it on yours.

Rhetoric · It means “the art of persuasion” and more specifically, the category of language used in an effort to convince, to make a point, to help another human understand your point of view. POSIWID, if it’s to have any currency at all, should be useful as a rhetorical tool.

Which matters. Because we are currently embedded in a torment nexus around values and humanism and antifascism and tolerance and late-stage capitalism and AI and AI and AI and AI. We need good rhetorical tools. And we need to be clear about what the purposes of systems are.

My claim is that POSIWID doesn’t help us understand the why and who of the malignant forces we’ve found ourselves horrified by and, I hope, are fighting back against. In other words, it’s rhetorically lousy. Let’s work by example:

The purpose IS · The purpose of GenAI IS to increase the wealth of a tiny handful of already-wealthy people.

The purpose of Grok/X IS to promote Musk-flavored fascism.

The purpose of the Fediverse IS to serve as a conversational platform that can’t be bought or shut down.

The purpose of a handgun IS to kill humans.

The purpose ISN’T · The purpose of the Internet ISN’T to serve revenge porn.

The purpose of a hammer ISN’T to enable domestic violence.

The purpose of the automobile ISN’T to accelerate the climate catastrophe.

The purpose of GenAI ISN’T to usher in a newer better world.

Late capitalism again · If we believe that money talks, we need an add-on. Because almost anything with a lot of human and/or financial investment also has the purpose of enriching someone. For example: The purpose of a handgun IS to enrich its manufacturer. So in discussions of purpose, let’s not leave that out.

Also, note that unlike many of the other things in the lists above, the purpose of the Fediverse ISN’T to make money for anyone. It’s fairly unique in that respect.

And, as the handgun example illustrates, it’s usually “purposes” not “purpose”, plural not singular. Another reason why chanting “#POSIWID” is generally misguided.

Anyhow… · When we engage in struggle for or (more often, these days) against something, we need to understand its purposes. And a vacuous mantra like POSIWID doesn’t help.