About 'Code and Civilisation'

Code and Civilisation is an exercise in disinterested contemplation: an attempt to reflect on the architecture of collaboration, the ascent of systems, and the quiet arts by which civilisation is built and sustained.

In Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation: A Personal View, culture advances not merely through invention, but through the patient accumulation of judgement, restraint, and shared understanding. In Sid Meier’s Civilization, progress is rendered more playfully, yet no less tellingly: technologies unlock institutions; institutions enable culture; culture, in turn, shapes the fate of societies. In both visions, technology is never neutral. It is a force that amplifies intention—for good or ill—and reveals the character of those who wield it.

We now inhabit a digital civilisation. Code has become one of its principal instruments. Public institutions, private enterprises, and international bodies all seek to harness technology in the service of efficiency, resilience, and the common good. And yet, between goodwill and outcome, there often lies a troubling gap: between ambition and execution; between modern tools and inherited habits; between what technology could enable and what organisations are structurally prepared to understand.

This blog exists in that gap.

I am a senior software engineer, shaped by many years of work across both public and private sectors, and a committed advocate of open-source collaboration. In recent years, my professional focus has been on central banking projects—an environment where technological decisions carry not only operational consequences, but societal ones. Few places reveal more clearly how deeply code is now interwoven with trust, legitimacy, and collective order.

Some of what I write here may appear elementary to experienced engineers. That is deliberate. The most consequential technological decisions are rarely made by those closest to the machinery. Executives and policymakers cannot be abandoned to make these choices alone—or worse, guided by fashionable half-truths that promise transformation while delivering fragility. They deserve a clear view of fundamentals: of trade-offs, constraints, and long-term costs. And we, in turn, benefit when they understand how engineers think—why we favour certain tools; why certain processes, though well-intentioned, so often undermine the work they are meant to support; and what conditions allow good systems to emerge.

My experience in the public sector has taught me something unfashionable but important: many senior decision-makers are thoughtful, conscientious, and genuinely open to learning. Helping them is not an act of condescension; it is an act of civic responsibility. They shape the policies, laws, and institutions that govern us all. If we wish for a better technological future, it is often more effective to persuade patiently than to complain loudly.

At the same time, our own technical communities are not immune to distortion. Exaggerated claims, inflated expectations, and methodological dogmas circulate with alarming ease. When reality inevitably intrudes, the result is not merely failed projects, but a corrosion of trust. I am concerned by this as well. Part of the task of civilisation—digital or otherwise—is knowing the limits of one’s tools, and speaking honestly about them before disappointment hardens into cynicism.

So rather than laughing, over coffee, at how “they don’t understand a thing” (or perhaps after the laughter has passed), I propose something more useful: to remain grounded, and to explain our craft with clarity, generosity, and restraint. This blog is my modest attempt to do so.

As a child, I loved reading and dreamed of becoming a journalist—someone who could observe carefully, explain patiently, and connect disparate ideas into a coherent whole. Later, Salman Khan became a role model, not only for his mastery of technology, but for his conviction that difficult subjects can be made accessible without being trivialised. In a sense, Code and Civilisation is where those personal ambitions meet my professional life: a place to write about technology not as fashion or spectacle, but as a civilising force—when handled with care.

If civilisation is, as Clark suggested, a fragile achievement, then so too are the systems we build today. They deserve our best judgement, our clearest language, and our quiet attention.