What is normal? Your normal is not my normal. Is what is happening today normal or abnormal? Many Trump supporters think what is happening is normal. How do we assess what is normal and what is not normal? Who is the keeper of this assessment? Is normalization done through technology, policy, or through real world social mechanisms and the evolution of culture? I spend a lot of time feeling like I am not normal, when I actually think it isn’t me, and I am just being exposed to dangerous definitions of normals which leave me feeling pretty out of sorts at the edge about what everyone is calling normal.
I am being told on many fronts that what is happening to the industry I work in is normal. I regally am told that when I go into enterprise organization to govern things that things are normal and because I do API governance I am in the business of destabilizing that. I am a white male who has woken up to the reality that what is normal to us white folks is not the normal for everyone else. I am intimately learning about how anxiety, burnout, and other things I am feeling are actually normal responses to capitalism. As soon as anyone speaks of normality, I am learning to immediately become skeptical of what that means and what their intentions are.
As a database engineer I’ve long been disciplined to normalize data upon entry into a database. Throughout my life I’ve been reminded by folks that I am not normal, either directly, or indirectly. I feel extremely alienated by the industry I work in, the technology being used, and the people I’ve collaborated with over the last fifteen years because I do not consider artificial intelligence and the groundswell around it normal. When artificial intelligence, databases, data, networks, and the information that flows is in service of a dangerous normalization of a very messy, but varietal human condition. While I would never venture to call myself normal, I can tell you confidently that what is being called normal is anything but normal, and we are reaching some dangerous levels of normality that needs to be seriously questioned.
