It’s tempting to think that entities we’ve created will simply go on forever, like perpetual motion machines that require neither maintenance nor intervention.

But the stark reality is quite the opposite. Nothing is permanent.

Humans are natural tinkerers, and we need to pay attention to the things we build to improve upon them.

As an engineer, Henry Ford knew this. He tinkered in his shed at 58 Bagley Avenue in Detroit until he created the Quadricycle in 1896.

He created Ford Motor Company in 1903 (after two false starts with other companies), introduced the Model T in 1908, and kept tinkering with the assembly process until he introduced the moving assembly line to the auto industry in 1913.

But even as he improved and simplified the assembly process, Ford began to lose workers. They were bored and frustrated by only doing one or two tasks repeatedly, and found work at other manufacturers.

Henry Ford decided that in order to retain his workforce, he had to make it worthwhile to work there, so he created the $5 workday that involved profit-sharing that more than doubled wages and created a path to profitability for workers, who could now afford to buy the very cars they built:

“We believe in making 25,000 men prosperous and contented rather than follow the plan of making a few slave drivers in our establishment multi-millionaires.”

In short, he paid attention to his community and determined a way to satisfy its needs.

The opposite could be said of Twitter right now. Aptly observed in The Verge (“How a Social Network Falls Apart”), Twitter is suffering from lack of care and attention.

We saw the same thing happen with other platforms like Tumblr and LiveJournal: new ownership didn’t understand the community, and people eventually disengaged, stopped using the platforms, and left.

The result: digital ghost towns with familiar infrastructure and architecture, but lacking in certain functionalities and devoid of interaction.

Even more stark at Twitter is the significant number of employees who were fired, leaving some teams with a skeleton crew or even disbanding teams entirely — including the team responsible for accessibility features that allow disabled users to engage with tweets.

The company was hollowed out, and the echoes there are reverberating throughout the platform.

It reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men,” an eerie and dream-like poem that describes a desolate world, populated by empty, defeated people.

Originally written to reflect the aftermath of European affairs following World War I, it literally refers to life after death, but can reflect any kind of existence following a traumatic event.

I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
   
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
   
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man's hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.
   
    Is it like this
    In death's other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

     The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
   
    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
   
    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death's twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

V…

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
                                    For Thine is the Kingdom
   
    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the
   
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

Read the whole thing.

But it’s not just Twitter or Eliot’s poem — it could happen to any community that doesn’t receive our attention and care.

It could happen to your neighborhood, your employees, your friends, your family.

Where are you putting your attention? What needs tending to in your life?

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the internet.