Technology
The sub-goals of programmers working on a shared artifact "can be deferred to the degree that they become what is known amongst professional programmers as an 'S.E.P.' - somebody else's problem." This can be considered an aspect of social loafing where, in some instances, while working as a team individuals become less productive because they feel less responsible for the final product.
Unix became popular because when it was developed at Bell Labs where "profits were somebody else's problem," so there was no reason not to share the source code with universities. This means that Bell Labs were not concerned with making Unix a profitable computer operating system and thus in turn making it conveniently accessible to university campuses.
Read more about this topic: Somebody Else's Problem
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)