Ever read a book that was very obvious but also a must-read? Well that’s Enshittification by Cory Doctorow.

You’ve probably heard the term Enshittification before because Doctrow made it famous. It’s a term to describe how things get worse and worse as they’re exploited, usually technology companies that were Doctrow’s initial targets. Well this is the book about why everything seems to be worse in the technology world. Companies locked us and their customers in and are squeezing us for every dime.

There’s very little in here that’s a surprise. But at the same time you’ll have a much better grasp about why your phone overheats when you go to web pages, why you get spam, and why your damn dishwasher has an internet connection.

Doctrow dives right in by discussing case studies of companies and services that Enshittified. None of this is going to be news to you in general, but the specific instances he invokes are eye-opening. You probably have at least one tech company you complain about and though it’s bad, it’s actually probably worse.

After giving you some examples that you’re all-too familiar with Doctorow then explores the Pathology of Enshittification. Simply put, there are usually social, government, and financial processes that keep companies from making their products worse. If you break those then, someone is going to start messing with the system, exploiting their locked-in users as much as they can.

Doctrow is pretty much of the opinion that modern corporations would Enshittify immediately, and gotta say, he has a point. Again a lot of this is very obvious, but when you see how many guardrails and limits to keep companies from making you insane for profit are gone, it’s worse than you think. Obvious, just worse than you think.

Then Doctorow does a deep dive on the Epidemiology of Enshittification, the various pathologies and signs and methods. This section introduces a number of useful terms, research, and concepts to help you understand what’s going on – and going wrong. Again, not a lot of it is surprising, but when you see the whole picture the depth is surprising.

To give an example, let’s talk what he calls “The End of Self Help.” We’re all aware of how many companies restricted the ability to repair devices, but the legal restrictions on what you can do with devices and software are probably far more strict than you realize. Repairing, playing with, modifying, or even accessing some devices in an “inappropriate” way can be made impossible or even illegal. Throw in internet-enabled tools and devices, and companies can lock you in and go after people who try to undo said locks.

Think about how that affects business, competition, and removes the concept of ownership. Now take this bit of Enshittification and multiply it by a whole lot of others. As I’ve mentioned a few times a friend decried in 2025 that it seemed technology hadn’t done anything truly new and good for ten years or more, and I kind of agree with her.

(Yay, we have better graphics, great, that’s being used to make Slop AI just like it was used to mine Bitcoin).

Finally, Doctorow looks at solutions. Some of this is the weakest part of the book as the solutions are obvious, but also we face a lot of challenges. Doctorow needed to give people more suggested action paths, communities to get involved in, and so on. The solution are movements and I think he could have done more with that.

And all of this, all of this is familiar. It’s just actually worse and dumber than we expected.

So my recommendation is that this is a must-read book but I’m not sure it’s a must-keep book. You’ll probably “get it” in one read and move on – hopefully after looking at the section on solutions and deciding to take action. So I do recommend buying a hard copy (which can’t be enshittified like a virtual one) and then when done lending it to someone else. Or have your book club do the same.

Let’s make sure this book doesn’t become a timeless classic.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

OK folks, I said I will discuss politics more, albeit in my own way so don’t assume this is going to be typical ranting. It’ll be my ranting, so it’s from a source you can trust.

So let’s talk the Iran War. A lot of people are talking about the Iran War of 2026, and everyone is wondering what will happen and in a lot of case telling us what is going to happen.

Now me I am going to say that I think the war is a bad idea, done under multiple questionable circumstances, with multiple unpredictable factors. There’s a can of worms, then there’s this, and know what, we don’t need this.

But am I going to say exactly what will happen? No, because:

1. My skills relevant to this are Project Management, Technology, and a slight bit of economics.
2. My knowledge of the Mideast is mostly “oh, gods, not another war” when other people know it far better than me.

I’m not exactly the guy to predict things. I am the guy to go “oh, not again” and “hey, remember how things went for the Kurds before?” but not laying out probabilities. In fact I’m suspicious of people who seem sure how things are going to go, because my PM instincts say a lot of people don’t know what they’re talking about.

Whenever some political event happens like the Iran War people start making very solid predictions about things. It’s not academic predictions (many an academic seems to be more in the “oh, no” category). It’s stuff that I’ve seen christened Political Fanfic, stories spun of wishes, dreams, hallucinations, agendas, and possible substance abuse.

I love that term, because it’s accurate.

It’s not hard to find politicians, pundits, preachers, and a lot of people on social media who have too much time on their hands writing political fanfic. They’re sure what’s going to happen. They spell it out in excruciating detail that sets off my Project Manager senses (if people can’t agree on fonts, you can’t predict the next ten years, bub). They’re very sure and very elaborate.

If your response to a war is to do some Game of Thrones level description, you are, as the kids say, “sus.” Also I will try to drop no more slang in the rest of this essay as it makes me feel old.

I see this all over and have seen it for so long. People just weaving tales for whatever reason – to feel smart, to get attention, to get social media clicks, or just plain arrogance. When it gets to actual politicians it’s potentially fatal, but when it’s just someone with fourteen Instagram followers it can still become a force multiplier for B.S.

It’s really starting to wear on me. The world is quite messy before the Iran War, and as this all can get very bad and fatal I’d like to focus on actual goals and solutions. It’s not reality TV here, even if the Iraq War seemed to kick that politics-as-reality TV into overdrive further all those years ago.

We don’t need political fanfic. We need to be asking what kind of world do we want and how do we get there. It’s two very hard questions! They’re so hard and so revealing that maybe it’s easier for some people to create their political fanfic.

But take it from a Project Manager – something I am qualified to speak on – we need people who show us goals and ways. Not political fanfic. If I want fiction, I’ve got plenty of that, and the plots are more sensible than whatever the heck people are spinning about Iran.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

When you work in IT if you have a problem, someone has The Solution – for money. Ok there’s free/open source versions but a lot of times people want to pay cash. You don’t get fired for spending someone’s money in too many cases.

There’s always some new piece of software, new module, or new upgrade that’ll solve The Problem. I get this at home as a hobbyist and writer, and I get it at work. My friends who usually work in IT experience the same thing.

However there’s a problem with buying The Solution.

That new software tool or module that will solve The Problem also requires you to follow procedures, and enter data, and do things just a bit differently. Sure you can get customizations or do them yourselves, but usually The Solution to The Problem also adds The Work.

Which, you figure will pay off. Eventually. Yeah you have to track this and add that, but eventually it’ll be more efficient.

Except, then sometimes you add another Solution to another Problem and add more Work. So yeah, you just added a bit more of extra stuff to do, right? It’s worth it! You have The Solutions to the Problems!

Now zoom ahead a few years (or maybe a few months at some places) and you’ve purchased or expanded so many Solutions and added so much Work that you have a new Problem – all the extra Work added to solve the Problem in the first place. Hell, at that point you may have been better off with the Old Problem before you decided to solve things.

We’ve probably all been there when The Work to use The Solution becomes more important than actually solving whatever The Problem was. We may miss the old Problem. We understood The Problem.

Essentially companies and individuals have paid to get more overhead. I’m sure you’ve been there. You may be there now. You may be drinking because you’re there now. Stop that, it’s bad for you.

I think this is because fixing a Problem is hard and requires effort and argument. Making changes needs effort and arguments. The temptation to buy a Solution is both fast and might seem easier at the time. It’s kind of like the old “no one got fired for buying IBM,” whereas the challenges of overhauling The Problem means you have to ask how you got there.

Sometimes I think we need a new wave of minimalism in IT. How can we do more with less? What do we really need to do? How can we scale back to find what we really need to do at a reasonable price?

Because I’m finding that a lot of Solutions just create a new Problem – more Work.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

And back to my Alternate Steves columns, where I look at how technology, politics, and culture could have diverged – told from the perspective of a “me” in those alternate universes. This one is about Ghostbusters and how the elements were there for a Star Wars/Marvel like Cinematic universe. It came from several conversations with friends.

Let’s meet another Steve Savage, a creative consultant for decades, who is currently on a speaking tour about the ups and downs of Cinematic Universes.

INTERVIEWER: . . . and my guest today is Steven Savage, a Creative Consultant and writer. So my first question Steve, is what does a Creative Consultant do?

STEVE: I help out people’s ideas for movies, TV shows, netcasts, and whatever they want to make and provide ideas, troubleshoot problems, or give warnings about bad choices.

INTERVIEWER: How much is just telling people it’s a bad idea?

STEVE: Give me five dollars and I’ll tell you if that question is a bad idea.

INTERVIEWER: (Laughs) I see. So since you’re in the spotlight for Culture Quickies, I wanted to ask you about your latest speaking engagement. You’ve actually given several talks on Ghostbusters. I’m sure my audience wants to know more, and maybe how you get paid to do that.

STEVE: Well we all know there are attempts to reboot the Ghostbusters franchise after it petered out. What I think is important is to understand just how formative it was, because Ghostbusters changed how we view media.

INTERVIEWER: Will you discuss the recent interview with the surviving stars?

STEVE: No, because that speaks for itself and for themselves and their lawyers. Anyway here’s the critical thing – Ghostbusters helped define what we call Cinematic Universes, and it nearly didn’t. It may be in its reboot phase now, but as someone who grew up in the 80s it’s hard to emphasize how formative it was.

Ghostbusters was a science-fiction action comedy with great effects and a fantastic cast. Parts of it have aged terribly, quite frankly, but at the time it was fresh, original, and fun.

Now the thing is what do you do after such a hit? Apparently there was some confusion and things could have gone different ways.

INTERVIEWER: Well there was the cartoon . . .

STEVE: Exactly, and that was part of it. And let’s not forget the cartoon was spectacular, though you can see the leftovers of the confusion. Let’s talk about that.

The rumor is that the execs weren’t quite sure what to do next. You had this big hit movie and you want to do more. But what’s the best way? The story goes that one of them brought up the line in the movie “Ask about our franchise opportunities” and the answer was go bigger.

The Ghostbusters cartoon – and people forget this – originally was a Saturday Morning affair. Some people still thought it was for kids. But the studio was getting a handle on what was going on and moved it to prime-time with a bigger budget and it became a hit.

INTERVIEWER: I know some people say Ghostbusters paved the way for The SImpsons.

STEVE: Well The Simpsons has gone on longer. Anyway, the studio decided to go all in on Ghostbusters with the idea that if you tied things together you’d get synergies. Bringing in some international animators was part of that. When they contacted West End Games to do the Ghostbusters RPG that was a critical one.

The Ghostbusters RPG could have been a shoddy affair, but they went all in. They called in creative consultants – not me, I was too young – and had some simple rules. As noted in Heading West, the idea was to make an RPG that was accessible to everyone, but also made for people into lore and RPGs. The result, let’s be honest, was slick but also easy to play.

INTERVIWER: I still have the lore books.

STEVE: West End turned out to be great at those. Remember how much detail their Star Wars game had? The funny thing being Star Wars inspired what happened to Ghostbusters.

The idea the execs centered around was to create an extended Ghostbusters franchise. Use tentpole movies to bring together properties, but also create stories and media tying into a larger universe. You’d see the movie, watch the show, get the game, but also get novelizations and even stories about other groups of Ghostbusters.

The idea was to have some continuing stories like Star Wars but old serials were also an inspiration – how do you keep people coming back? A lot of people cut their teeth on Ghostbusters – you know the old story we wouldn’t have Babylon 5 without Ghostbusters. We certainly wouldn’t have had X-files or The Hundred Year Chronicles.

INTERVIEWER: I remember how suddenly everything became Ghostbusters.

STEVE: Yes, and honestly it got out of hand since the franchise idea had stuck with the execs.

So you had an animated TV show, but wanted movies. But also wanted a presence, so the idea was to make movies with other Ghostbusters. So the studios carefully engineered other films with the idea of tying them together, fortunately they hit on a model that worked – for awhile.

The idea was that you find a group of actors and writers who can pull it off – within constraints. There were actually rules for how to do a Ghostbusters film. This all fed back to a central group that was trying to arrange a cinematic continuity. What we called a Cinematic Universe now.

Star Wars gave us a linear set of films. What came out of this was a relative explosion of films, tied together with crossover movies. Each film however was left in the hands of people to do their best – within constraints.

INTERVIEWER: And the other countries . ..

STEVE: Yeah thats where it got weird. Because why not give the rights to do a Ghostbusters show in Canada? In the UK? Have another franchise going! And let’s be entirely real here, more than a few of these “franchise” shows just involved someone repurposing another script or idea.

It also got hard because the cartoon was technically continuity. So people started handing off ideas and side characters to the cartoon. Then the films. But it worked as you had a lot people trying to make it work.

It was also insanely profitable.

INTERVIEWER: But it didn’t last.

STEVE: No, you hit a saturation point, but there was a lot more, which is in my speech. Which I need to plug.

INTERVIEWER: I’ll do it at the end.

STEVE: The problem is that you have many independent films and shows, some of which are good, but you can’t innovate. Everything has to feed into a tentpole movie.

Also it was hard on the original stars and the stars that came later. I mean do you want to keep getting dragged back into these films? Do you want to play second fiddle to an animated interpretation of your character? Plus are you getting your cut properly?

The lawsuits that came out didn’t help, but they didn’t kill Ghostbusters. I honestly think the idea overstayed it’s welcome and couldn’t evolve. If you had some continuing plots, if you made the shared Ghostbusters universe more of a soap opera, it could have gone on. Instead we had that crashout in the 200s..

INTERVIEWER: Oh the numbers . ..

STEVE: Terrible. And the execs panicked, the MMO they planned never happened and everyone cut their losses.

Star Wars, you’ll notice kept going. Even if it seems we’re suddenly a bit saturated with it today. It stayed steady. Which is the final thing I want to talk about.

INTERVIWER: Yeah, the nature of the CInematic Universe.

STEVE: Star Wars had the seed of the idea, but Ghostbusters solidified it. They gave us the idea of tightly linked media properties that weren’t linear or one show after another. Ghostbusters wore itself out, but so many imitated them.

We saw how the comic book movies suddenly wanted to do crossovers – that’s supposedly why Tim Burton quit the second Batman film. Star Trek The Next Generation had it’s short-lived “parallel” show. We also saw plenty of actually good attempts to adapt things or make original works.

Did they work? Well, somewhat. I was pleased about Highguard because it was low-level fantasy and honestly it was a breath of fresh air. DC outsourcing work to Japan to make some animated shows using Legion of Superheroes as a kind of “far future” touchstone was clever. But there were a lot of dismal failures, most of which we don’t see because they didn’t get made.

Oh, and there’s what Disney did. Try to retroactively build a cinematic universe. Which is both insane and almost admirable even if all they do is churn out their own fanfic.

I think the issue is that to build a Cinematic universe you need people to be into it. Existing properties may get attention, but also you’re constrained by choices. You need a lot of talent or money to pitch a new idea or to retrofit an old one.

And as always, there’s the exhaustion Ghostbusters experienced. There is nothing permanent here unless, maybe, you go the soap opera model, and I invite you to ask how we’ll that’s going.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think these Cinematic Universes or the reboot make sense?

STEVE: (Pause) Honestly? No. I’ll be frank here, we need more original works and more standalone or tightly bound works. There’s a time to do something and a time to end it. The hope to recreate the Ghostbusters gamble is a risky one and people are leery. There’s a reason we’ve seen that small press and small film explosion, and it’s not just the internet. There’s a reason that Netflix has made bank with their Skunkworks projects.

So before you ask, my advice when I consult is, if someone wants to do a Cinematic Universe of SOME kind, is to think hard. What do you want to do and why should people care and keep caring. Again, the soap opera model.

Not of course that for awhile having everything Ghostbusters wasn’t fun. I wonder if it’s success was one of the reasons I got into Creative Consulting in the first place. People wanted to make their shows work and I knew my nerd stuff.

INTERVIEWER: Well we’re at time, and you can see Steve’s Nerd Stuff this Friday . . .

I’d love to hear what regular readers think. Could Ghostbusters have become a Cinematic Universe before others?

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

As per my last post I said I will be talking more (but not entirely) about politics. And if you think I’m going to jump into something big, right now, not really. Well I kind of am. Because I want to share something that I find useful in thinking about society, politics, and how we get things done at scale.

It won’t surprise you that it’s about Agile methods, but one that affects my politics – and might give you a few ideas.

For anyone not familiar with Agile (a vanishingly small number of people who read me as I talk about it a lot), it’s an approach to work, started in software, about reasonably-sized teams working in short increments. The popular method is Scrum, where teams take a list of priorities, tackle a limited set over a short time, and then review and do it all over again. I’ve applied it to writing, art, and more.

But as you may guess, small teams is like about 5 people give or take. So how do you do a big project? Well someone invented Scrum At Scale. You have teams, but team leads from those team meet on their OWN Scrum teams to coordinate. Bigger project? Then you have teams of team leads of team leads, and pile it as high as possible. It’s pretty cool and isn’t the giant process-haul that rival SAFE is.

It also affected my view of politics.

First, one of the problems of politics is non-participation or exclusion. To be part of society is to be part of it, like it or not. At the same time plenty of people want to exclude others to get their own “selectorate” to make holding power easier, and of course usually screwing over everyone else. Scrum at Scale made me realize how important it is for people to be involved and involved at multiple levels.

You should pay attention to your community, but also to your state/province, federal, and the world and be involved. If necessary hold office even if it’s an informal community thing. Good leaders should also be trusted if they can and have held positions at lower levels and have actually done something. I’m no military adventurist by a long shot, but there’s a reason I sometimes vote for ex-mils as well as doctors, emergency workers, etc.

Scrum at Scale is about being involved and being in touch among levels. A team lead on the lowest level scrum team might be a representative on one team, and the team above that, and so on. That’s the kind of thing software development or society needs – integration of people.

But there’s one more factor as well. Scrum of Scrums, especially, emphasizes communicating problems upward. What a team below can’t solve, the team above tries to tackle, and so on up the chain. Eventually unsolvable problems land on a leadership group, and if no one else can fix them that’s their job.

Problems go up, solutions come down. If you’ve ever seen politicians try to solve issues that they usually make up you realize how important this idea is. The higher up the chain you are the more you should help fix the unfixable things below. If no problems come up then you keep things running, which is important because I can say quite cynically many a problem is caused by a politician trying to keep their job.

Honestly, a lot of my politics are influenced by things that aren’t seen as political – project management, biology, and so on. But as I’ve noted before everything is really political, so we should learn from everything.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

I once had someone note that my blog wasn’t political, and that was refreshing. I can sort of get that, especially if you’ve encountered writers to A) turned “political” and B) did it for the clicks/attention/cash. “Politics” has become a dirty word in some ways, and people have made an effort to dirty it.

But that made me think. See my blog does talk politics. In fact it talks politics more than many readers may realize (and probably in some cases, than I realize). Because a lot of my blog is about organization, technology, culture, and getting things done. That’s all politics.

Ed Zitron may be the Lewis Black of technology, but if you ever heard or read his stuff, his work is political, he just doesn’t say it.

I do avoid, in some cases, making it explicitly political. Some of this is the dismal state of modern politics. A lot of it is about what I want to discuss. If I make specific political statements then that means those who automatically disagree won’t listen and those who automatically agree won’t question me. I’m fine with disagreement and agreement, but would like it to be heartfelt not automatic.

Praise me or call me a dumbass for real, not because I repeated a talking point.

When I do this consciously, I’m kind of annoyed with it, because politics should be interesting and engaging. Politics is part of society and civilization. In fact, to try to avoid politics is to avoid having a society. To emphasizes that let’s talk the Toledo Zoo and Civil Defense.

The Toledo Zoo, which I had visited many times, had some buildings made by the Works Progress Administration back in the 30s. Those lasted quite awhile, and the WPA was the result of politics. I’ve also dug up books create due to the WPA and so on. Parts of our history due to politics.

Civil Defense, for a time, interested me as well. At first for the nature of it’s communications, and later for what it meant. As a Project Manager seeing Americans come together in organized fashion intrigued me. It’s also part of my interest in disaster recovery. Yes, Civil Defense was propaganda-heavy, it was political, but it also left a legacy.

Politics can be sure we get things done. Ever go and say “someone should fix this?” Well getting it fixed is politics.

But why has it become such a dirty word? Why is it associated with screaming at each other over Thanksgiving? Why can’t we, you know, solve problems?

My short take is simply this – we’re in a media saturated culture where politics is somewhere between lousy soap opera and gladiatorial game. Some people compare it to wrestling but that’s insulting wrestling. We’ve made politics about anything but doing things, and all that does is serve entrenched interests at best. At worse (and I think we’re at worse), politics is essentially a media-industrial complex filled with people who will say and do anything for hits, money, and to release their own psychological complexes.

And while all this is going on? Terrible things are happening, only we’re not as aware of them or trying to fix them as she should be.

(I have suspected the origins of this are in Kennedy’s popularity and the mass media, but I think there’s more I need to chew over. A friend has been studying media history and his insights are depressingly useful.)

We’ve made politics not about getting anything done and politics has always had its problems. We should be engaged. We should have discussions, not arguments. We should do things for our communities of all kind. We should not be listening to some guy on YouTube who alternately argues for insane politics while pitching pills to fix erectile dysfunction or legal psychedelics.

So I may be talking politics more directly. Be the change I want to see in the world and all. Though I can’t say I won’t do a bit of a runaround before I admit something is about politics. Let’s keep things fun here – as opposed to what too much political talk is about.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

Ages ago I was working on some scheduling software used to schedule setting up computers in data centers. This is pretty complex as you’ve got a giant building and you need the space, the power, the networking hookups, and enough ventilation. Before you schedule and do any of that you have to check if it can be done – you might be facing power limits, overheating, lack of parts, and so on. If you haven’t been in a data center, it’s a balancing act just to set things up – I can get into that in another time.

Anyway I was looking at this software which I hadn’t written but was maintaining and got ideas on how to make it more efficient. I eventually worked out a way to get scheduling tracked down to tiny increments so we’d know who was doing what at all time!

“Don’t do it, people will hate you,” is a rough summary of my boss’ reaction.

Of course I realized that my cool idea that would allow for such precision would be insufferable to the people doing the job. They’d have schedules with no wiggle room that they’d either break or have to constantly update making their jobs harder and more stressful. Plus the jobs would be less efficient because of my bright idea as the tracking tool would be the centerpiece of my life.

Besides, you know, maybe I should have thought about just trusting the people doing their damn job.

If you haven’t been a software guy or an engineer, you may figure this is obvious. But when you’re an engineer of some kind, or any other “making/solving” profession, solving a problem and making a cool solution can become paramount over anything else. Including people hating you.

It’s fun to make solutions even if they’re stupid and unrealistic in reality. If youre solutions-oriented (like me) even more so. This is also why – in part – I think our Internet Age has created so much stupid and bad stuff.

Technology also lets us solve problems quickly and at scale. You can hook up a few web frameworks and transform a web page. YOu can push a solution to A/B testing or production and people are using it right away. It’s almost enough to make you forget good QA!

(I joke, people have been always forgetting QA).

Making things happen is a rush, and technology lets us deliver it faster and get that rush. Of course it may also mean we’ve just done something dumb, quickly, and at scale.

But we might not even realize how bad our latest idea is. We made the thing fast, we got the thing working, it’s just what we wanted – and only later discover it’s a terrible concept.

Worse, the marketing department or investors may tell us it’s a great idea and we never realize our latest bright idea for a Thermos with Bluetooth is insufferably stupid.

No matter how much of the strange and stupid things spewed out of technology companies may be pandering stock-jacking ideas, part of this “joy of solving” is almost certainly part of it. Someone had a great idea – even if it’s just a way to tweak the stock price with a useless release – and implemented it. Money and power can tempt people, but that rush of a solution turn off your morals as well.

So when we look at many strange, useless, and outright immoral technologies don’t just follow the money. Somewhere in the lineage is probably more than a few people who just had so much fun “making things work” they didn’t think about it.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

I’ve been thinking of large, easy-to-deploy, fast-to-scale solutions can be an inefficient waste of time. Before I go into my inevitable rant-o-speculation, let me note the origin – Chinese history and Agile. Trust me, it’s worth it.

As to Chinese History, I’ve had a deep interest in the Taoists and because of that some of Chinese history and culture. The Taoists provide a body of philosophy, meditation, and sarcastic humor while focusing on simplicity, uncomplicated-ness, and a kind of mystical realism. Chinese History is replete with scholar-bureaucrats whom I deeply relate to because I’m me. This means I can read about a figure who is essentially “He was in the Department of Awesome Flowcharts and a famous Taoist scholar” and go “yeah, this dude rocks.”

Early on in philosophical Taoism there’s an emphasis on frugality, not-over reaching, and taking care of things while small. Arguably the “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” originated in the Tao Te Ching (Chapter 64). If you focus on small things before they’re large and not overdoing it, you get a lot done without, well, doing a lot.

Now does this sound like Agile? Well now you can see where this comes in . . . and learn even more about my personality. I love Agile’s focus on small, meaningful incremental change. The tenth Agile principle even states success is what you don’t have to do. Well done Agile Projects do what is needed, no more, and thus get a lot done – and even save time by not overdoing things.

By now if you know me, you can see where this is going in the world of IT solutions, so thanks for humoring my above explanation. Now let me rant about discussions I have with my friends in IT which is . . . most of them.

Back in my day (hey, I’ve been in IT 30 years) I saw a lot of custom IT systems. I built them. Whatever you needed for your specific needs might not have an off-the-shelf solution, and if it existed it was large and expensive. So when you had to make something custom you learned the issue, solved the solution, then watched your code decay for ten years after getting a promotion. Maintenance was an issue, but at least it was small.

(Software is an expense, talent is the investment.)

In time people of course made solutions that were scalable, that were customizable, that built on layers and layers of code over the decades. We took advantage of cloud computing, of distribution systems. Any large provider of services can instantly set up your small business because of years of investment.

You can implement the same solution as the big guys, or customize a solution . . .

. . . except everything is now all so large.

You just bought, say, an infrastructure tracking tool. Sure it’s on the cloud, but only runs in this one browser. Also you have to figure which modules to activate. You have to train your team. You also have a lot of features you may not need, but everyone wants them as they’re there and easy to use (for the people who want them). You may not have to maintain the system, but you have to get everyone on board something they never participated in making and isn’t based on your specific needs.

Oh, and as soon as a certain web security company who’s name sounds like “Clown Strife” goes under your inventory system is unreachable. Well, also half your other systems are too, but I digress because I still flash back to that outage.

Now you’re using all of this stuff to ease paperwork while creating more paperwork. You are probably entering data you don’t need but it was one of the features. You now have to reconcile the new system with the old system, which is months of work and means you need a consultant. You’re trying to get everyone aligned on something that you basically dropped on them and they make workarounds.

I have met people who were still solving problems with spreadsheets because the applications didn’t work. I have been those people.

You quickly and efficiency implemented a big solution that doesn’t quite work and thus you make more work and waste more time. You have small issues to solve and maybe if you solved them first you wouldn’t be here. Plus maybe you had no gain once all the overhead is taken account of.

All that new work you added may be worse than the janky old system – and you can’t tell.

Right now in technology we can implement huge, powerful solutions easily with no concept of the small picture that makes them work. We don’t even know if they serve the small picture as the “Big Thing” becomes paramount. You can buy a solution and not solve anything and may not know.

Maybe it was worth it slowly maintaining and upgrading the system you had. Or having done it right in the first place. B Or a piecemeal migration.

This is a reminder of Agile, of the Taoists, all having a point. Solutions are often about the small things, about working on something before it’s large, of doing what’s needed – and not letting things grow into a problem. I think in the world of IT we’ve accumulated so much tech, so many solutions it’s easy to just throw a Big Thing at a problem. That may not solve the problem, it may make more of them.

There are situations that need bottom-up implementation and that’s a lot of them. Yes, you might be able to use a Big Solution, but only after you get what you need, and probably do it incrementally. You have to address the small to fix the big, not throw the Big at whatever else is Big and hope.

Also let’s face it, sometimes we get Big Solutions because we let something get out of hand and hope it’ll fix it. We forgot the lesson of starting small then repeat it.

Think small. It’s the way to do big things right as opposed to just doing a Big Thing and hoping.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

It was only in the fall of 2025 that I became acquainted with the term “Slop Bowl” – references to the “bowl meals” from Chipotle, SweetGreen, and a huge amount of fast casual dining. I’d not heard of it, I’m guessing it was a regional thing, and I also found it a bit insulting for the food. So as a break from my usual deeper speculations, I want to talk food, namely I dislike the insulting term and reference “Slop Bowl.”

Do I have opinions on food? Of course. I love to make food and cook, and I also like to be efficient and effective. So I have opinions on “Slop Bowls.”

Namely, I say, don’t go insulting them.

First, the average Slop Bowl is usually a damn sight healthier than your average fast food. I mean most Slop Bowls are basically salads, burrito bowls, or just reasonably nutritious stuff. Hell, Poki Bowls are Slop Bowls by some definition. If people are getting their “Green, a bean, a grain” for a meal? Good. It beats most of the other options.

Secondly, Slop Bowls are convenient. People don’t need to unwrap three boxes of food or a sandwich that may fall apart. You got a bowl. That’s it. One stop shop for a meal, easily portable, easy to stack, easy to clean up after.

Fourth, Slop Bowls are historical. Isn’t a stir-fry essentially a Slop Bowl? How many soups, stews, and meals through history were just “a container of stuff” that was a meal? Single-serving casserole meals are just a slightly more structurally sound slop bowl – a slop plate? Humans have always found ways to toss stuff into one meal.

Fifth, and finally, Slop Bowls are easy to make. Before I heard the term, before I ate fast casual bowls, I made them. I still make them albeit I called and call them something different. This has included:

• Brown rice, shredded spinach, mashed tofu, mixed with Korean fermented peppers and soybeans.
• Salads of beans or tofu, steamed broccoli or “refrigerator slaw”, some pickled vegetables, and a dressing (usually a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, and chili paste).
• Full-service stews that are basically filled with veggies and beans (garbanzo is a favorite).
• Nachos that are covered in stir-fried cabbage and refried beans with salsa. Yeah, aren’t Nachos just a slop bowl in a way?
• Assorted curries – c’mon, slop bowl.

As much as I like different foods, as much as I like different forms of food, I keep returning to “bowl meals” again and again when I want to keep things simple and healthy. And why not? We humans have always wanted to earth healthy, reduce cleanup, and do it fast.

So let’s not insult the Slop Bowl. Let’s salute it as a part of human history for very good reasons.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com

So I recently saw Fackham Hall. It’s a movie that was advertised as sort of “Naked Gun But For Stuffy British Stuff.” I am pleased to report I enjoyed it, it was also very stupid, and there’s actually something to learn from it. Enough that I want to share.

So first of all, if you wonder “will I like it,” I’d say that Fackham Hall is actually in the vein of the 2025 Deathstalker film that was an homage to old direct-to video fantasy. There is an intended audience, and if you are in that audience, you will enjoy it. If you are not, don’t bother. This is a film for people who’ve watched a lot of Stuffy British Stuff and have a sense of humor about it.

Now when it comes to a comedy the question is are the jokes any good? Fackham Hall has a lot of jokes in it, of extremely varied quality, but you won’t be lacking jokes. Not all of them are good, I’d say that the overall humor is “OK,” there’s plenty of laughs. There’s an over-reliance on crudity for the most part that I found offputting, but there are plenty of actually good jokes.

Two things stand out from the humor. The first is that there are jokes where the setup is actually part of the humor, where you realize how far the movie went for a joke or a sudden case where one thing suddenly becomes funny due to one tiny action. The second is there are a few scenes that authentically stand out, most notable an extended dialogue joke in the vein of “Who’s on first” that had me in tears. There is effort here, albeit it makes some of the low-effort jokes more obvious.

Fackham Hall does have two larger lessons, a minor one and a major one I want to explore. These are enough that they provide lessons for other comedies.

The minor lesson is that Fackham Hall actually has a plot that drives the story forward, if erratically. The Davenport family risks losing their beloved estate unless their daughter marries the cousin due to inherit it – and the disruption of a roguish young visitor and an eventual murder add chaos to the countdown. Some characters have their own concerns and sidestories. There’s enough here to power a general movie, and that gives the film plenty of energy, even if the actual plot could have been used more in the jokes.

The major lesson is the cast and the acting. For all it’s silliness the cast acts as seriously as if they were in a dramatic film. It’s not deadpan, it’s a talented lot of actors acting as if this is a film of drama and danger and intrigue and love. Watching people do the stupidest things with great sincerity and gravitas takes the film farther and makes even lame jokes actually funnier.

Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Radcliffe take on the role of inevitable lovers, and show actual chemistry and charm together. Emma Laird, who’s character’s marriage shenanigans drive the early part of the film has a scene of emotional breakdown where she is crying and screaming while also upending the common tropes of said scene. Tim McMullan plays Cyril, the family butler with absolute seriousness while also being the butt of a movie-long joke he leans into and keeps going.

The absolute standout is Damian Lewis as the Davenport family patriarch, Humphrey. Lewis invests this somewhat befuddled and inbred character with charm and sensitivity, making him actually likeable. There’s even a scene where he expresses his fatherly love to one of his daughters that is touching. Jokes be damned, Lewis was acting and nothing stopped him, not even the script.

What made Fackham Hall work was – ironically – what makes a good movie. Give it a plot and get actors who will act. It can even elevate some poor jokes or missed opportunities. I enjoyed this enough that I actually got curious to see the actors in other works, especially Mr. Lewis.

It’s not every day you can take lessons in comedy from a film that includes J.R.R. Tolkien farting, but here you go. My kudos to the cast.

Steven Savage

• www.StevenSavage.com
• www.InformoTron.com