> In "tech" its ofta forgotten that they are dealing with real people, individuals.
Don't attribute to tech that could be adequately explained by a management incompetence. I've seen stupid things done by a techy people. I've seen way more way stupider things demanded by management [and implemented by tech or whoever at the bottom of the food chain].
Sure. However tech is obsessed with data and optimisations, if they run a hospital and the data showed that obese people are less profitable they will put a scale on the entrance and triage by BMI or someone will calculate that some drug which kills in the long run gives enough time to propel their career through saving pennies.
I don't see your point. Did I say that tech is the only one doing it?
What's special about tech, is that they have the means to take it to another level because they are very capable to collect and analyse data and quickly deploy changes and almost never face the consequences. Low touch high scale is the name of the game and they are completely disconnected from the people impacted. 10K people losing their children's baby photos is just a blimp in the analytics and its "fixable" by an apology tweet, they will never understand the pain those impacted will suffer because they don't have a contact with the customer besides some charts.
It seems so, although possibly you did it accidentally. When you say "if tech controlled hospitals then it'd do it this way" then you're definitely attributing this mindset to "tech" people, rather to any people who address customer populations in the millions.
I think it's reasonable for a reader to assume that if you're making a category error (I've seen some people I call "tech people" do this, therefore all "tech" people do this), you aren't being sophisticated about your categories, and that you are attributing it exclusively.
A correct (and not exclusive to tech people) mindset would be "some people think like this. Some of those people work in tech." And you'd be right. Others work in the NHS, to decide what medicines get paid for for the most good.
Roll back far enough to the times of Charles Dickens and early industrialisation and the answer is a qualified yes.
Data driven acturial decisions affected significantly large chunks of the population of industrial towns and cities.
( Populations then, of course, lower than now so the qualified exception is the proportional size rather than absolute numbers )
Time cards, the rule of the clock, mass labour projects, cost shavings to the penny, food supplies barely but just sufficient, etc. are all practices that date to these times at industrial scale and they were implemented via ledgers, card files, and literal computers .. desk arrays of clerks passing numbers back and forth to refine raw data.
Don't attribute to tech that could be adequately explained by a management incompetence. I've seen stupid things done by a techy people. I've seen way more way stupider things demanded by management [and implemented by tech or whoever at the bottom of the food chain].