Ferdinand de Saussure argued that something is, by what it is not. We cannot have ‘good’ without ‘evil’. Jacques Derrida believes that in Western culture one of these binary pairs holds dominance whilst the other is marginalised. White/black, man/woman, matter/spirit, Christian/pagan. It is a hierarchical relationship…
“What threatens is indeed writing” Derrida
In “Agile Software Development” (2000), Cockburn writes against writing. The heat of the communication channel, he argues, increases as we move away from text towards face-to-face communication. Marks on paper are a poor form of communication, he argues, which are open to misinterpretation and feedback delays. Improving upon this are: email exchange, audio-tape and continuing in order of “richness”; video-tape, phone calls and close physical proximity facilitated by a modelling apparatus…