This is a post about my travel to Cornwall for Agile on the Beach, a fantastic conference. So why do I talk about fields of princes? You’re going to have to bear with me. But this will involve big questions about why we are here, what life is all about, an awe-inspiring keynote by a mad Viking witch from the Dutch railways and some Austrian folk music. And no, it probably won’t get any less weird.

So first things first, I mentioned the field of princes. What’s that all about? It’s the best translation I could come up with for “Fürstenfeld”, which is both a town in my native Styria - one of the nine Austrian states - and a song by the Styrian band STS (think 3 guitars, clever lyrics and sometimes melodies stolen from the Beatles). It also is the very last song I played in the car at full volume when I got back from Agile on the Beach. It had been a long trip (6ish hours) and I was both emotionally tired and energised. I had just spent two days of being amongst great people, listening to talks and talking about AI, software development, Shakespeare, inappropriate acting, a beach party, excellent food. And if that wasn’t mentally stimulating enough, then there was Veerle’s closing keynote.

Enigmatically titled “Veerle doesn’t want to talk about AI”, it soon became clear that this was something special. About a third of the way through, Veerle confidently predicted that she’d lost most of the audience, but to me it felt like that the audience were hanging on her every word. The question was simple:

What are we here for?

The answer is equally simple as it is depressing. We’re here to work. And not only that, we are here to work for “shareholder value”. This is the tragic conclusion that we have to come to when we’re looking at our lives:

• We measure our worth by how much artificial tokens we get paid every month
• When someone asks us what do we do, the answer is “I’m a software engineer” and not all the other things that happen in your “free time”.
• Community engagement, hobbies, art, caring for others are more often than not taken for granted or counted as optional extras.
• When shareholders want more value, then people are fired in the name of efficiency savings
• Unemployment is a dirty word, if you have no job, then you have no value to society is what we’re told over and over again. Worse, you are a sponger that steals from everyone else.

Productivity Lie

It gets worse than that. The news often tells us that we need to be more productive. Productivity is lagging and that’s why everything gets more expensive and more and more people struggle to just live. Because we’re not productive enough, we need food banks, and we need technological progress to help us make more stuff quicker, so we can get more imaginary tokens. But for what? If we do our work in 6 hours instead of 8, do we get to go home quicker? If we create more shareholder value, do we feed the world better?

If we are making this much progress, then why is half of the world living in poverty. Why are more and more people in rich countries failing to make ends meet?

This is not new

This is where I’d like to get back to my listening to music late at night on the M6. The Styrian trio of Steinbäcker - Timischl - Schiffkowitz: STS, sang the following in their song “Irgendwann bleib i dann dort” (I’m going to hackney some translations, so bear with me).

In uns’rer Hektomatik-Welt
Dreht si' alles nur um Macht und Geld
Finanzamt und Banken steig’n mir drauf
Die Rechnung, die geht sowieso nie auf

roughly

In our hectic world
Everything revolves around power and money
Taxman and banks push me
It never adds up

That was released 1985. So more than 40 years ago. We can go back further still and find the same sentiments. This is not a new thing that people feel like they are working for something that at it’s core is meaningless. Why should we be working for shareholder value, just so that we can produce the world’s first trillionaire? Someone that is ammassing more money that countries and probably still manages to pay a minimum in taxes because we don’t tax ridiculous wealth.

In their song of “Kalt und Kälter”:

Und i wer kalt und immer kälter
I wer' abgebrüht und älter
Aber das i will i ned, und das muss i jetzt klärn
I möcht lachen, tanzen, singen und rearn
Angst und Schmerzen solln mi wieder würgn
Und die Liebe möcht i bis in die Zechenspitzen spürn

roughly

And I become cold and colder I am numb and older But I don’t want that and I must get that clear I want to laugh, dance, sing and cry Fear and Pain shall I suffer again And I want to feel Love into the tips of my toes

Again. Released 1985. I heard this when I was a child and teenager and those songs left a mark in me. Still, I feel the same way. The older I get, the more cynical I am. Gone is the desire to change the world. Gone is the pain. Yes, I sometimes feel that old anger when I see politics getting more right wing and intolerant. Even there, Austria provides a good example. The rise of the populist Freedom Party under Jörg Haider also kicked off in 1986. And it combined xenophobia, stirring up hatred against immigrants with an admiration of the Third Reich. Feels like what’s happening with Reform in the UK. Nothing good comes from that intolerance. Nothing good comes from treating people like they are scum whether it is because of the colour of their skin or their employment status.

I moved from Austria to the UK about 30 years ago. And it felt great. There was a society that was liberal and welcoming to different peoples. I know, it was not perfect, but in that initial period of Cool Britannia hope after the Labour victory when I arrived, it felt hopeful. Of course, it didn’t take that long to become disillusioned and lose hope. Easier to bury the anger and get on with life I guess.

That’s why I enjoyed Veerle’s keynote so much. She held up a mirror to apathy and hopelessness. I loved the simplicity of the message:

She asked us a favour at conference: Go out and talk about it. Why should we still be caged by the idea that work is the only thing worthwhile. Why do humans have to scrape together an existence and the only altar worth praying at is the worldwide shrines of financial institutions?

After all, isn’t there a more worthy cause than the financial health of all those billionaires who are funding all the fascists, so they can exploit us even more?

Saving the planet?

Oh, how about stopping the ecological catastrophe that we’ve known about since the 70s? And we’re actively putting our head in the sand?

Of course, in 1987, STS released “Die Kinder san dran”, with the following lovely refrain:

Nur die Kinder san dran, uns’re Kinder san dran
Sie halten sich an uns’rer Hand fest und wissen noch nix davon
Sie werd’n a wenn’s woll’n uns niemals versteh’n
Sie können uns niemals verzeih’n wenn sie’s überhaupt überleb’n

roughly

Only the children will pay, our children will pay
They hold our hand and don’t know it yet Even if they wanted, they’d never understand They can never forgive us if they’ll even stay alive

Now, at the time this was all about nuclear energy. Chernobly had just happened and the cold war was still going. So atomic was going to kill us either by accident or by war. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, nuclear energy may be part of the solution. As to whether climate change is still containable is highly questionable.

What I do think however is that we need more people like Veerle, asking the question about whether growing productivity should be the unquestioned truth that it is in the western world. We need to focus on what is actually important. And as Veerle quoted: it only takes 3.5% of a population to affect change.

We always talk about the importance of collaboration and helping ones in need. How can we help ourselves? Maybe we just need more time, and less money. Certainly I don’t see any reasons why a single person needs billions or hundreds of millions in assets. If an animal exhibited the behaviour of accumulating and not sharing wealth, we’d think of it as defective. Let’s do that for the likes of Bezos and Musk too.

As people working in tech, we’re often very privileged. Tech bros in silicon valley have done a lot of damage. To the planet by creating an insatiable demand for energy and water. To the people by creating an insatiable need for scrolling and reading untruths and negative propaganda.

We need to think more. Play more. Care more. And shout from the rooftops that our current way of living is not ok.

I do want to be angry again, and dance again, and live again.

Of course, history tells us we don’t often learn… shame really.

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