In this paper the author highlights how both engineers and social scientists misinterpret the relationship between technology and society. In particular he attacks the narrative, widespread among engineers, that technological artifacts, such as software, have no political properties in themselves and that function or efficiency are the only drivers of technological design and implementation.
You must log in or register to comment.
Politics is what happens when more than two people must make a decision
Like everything, there’s no solid answer. Some software is, some isn’t. Some software exists simply because an engineer needed a very specific tool and didn’t want to run a business out of selling said tool - no different than a carpenter making a custom nail for a piece of furniture they were working on.
Other software was designed because of / with a political / philosophical ideology in mind, such as that all software should be free to use.
Creating something isn’t always political, sometimes you just want or need to make something. If you choose to make spaghetti for dinner tonight instead of fried rice, that’s just because that’s what you were in the mood for. You might have ideology or beliefs attached with the kind of food you eat, yes, but the act of creation in that moment was not spurred by them - you were just hungry and in the mood for one over the other.
Well, even if something isn’t created “politically motivated” it can still be or become political.
What license do you choose? What platform do you choose to distribute it? What operating system do you support? What programming language and library dependencies do you have? On which platform do you manage your community or communicate with your customers or users? What feature do you add, or dismiss when writing the software. Etc. All of these are, or can become political issues.
Even if you decide to not release it for the public and keep it to yourself, can be a political issue. The mere existence of something can create a imbalance of capabilities, e.g. people with access to the software have advantages over people with no access to it, which can be political.
Even the mere fact that you possessed the resources, knowledge and time to create software can be or is political.
IMO, I would say everything is or can become a political issue. It just depends if there is some public interest and discourse. The intention or motivation of the developer doesn’t matter.
Yeah but everything can become anything with enough effort. Everything can be violence too for example. Everything can be nothing. Everything can be food (at least once).
Someone making something political through that angle is no different than any other philosophy making something part of that philosophy.
Doesn’t change that something can be created without political intention, thought etc, no different than a sad poem written wasn’t created with nihilistic purposes even though it could possibly be applied to nihilism.
At that point, it’s you that’s making something political, not the thing itself being political. And that’s fine, but if done constantly, it’ll become just as insufferable as the angsty teenage nihilistic kid who saps joy out of every single thing you do. After all, end of the day we all die anyway, and we’re just specs of astro microscopic dust in the greater universe with delusions of grandeur that is ultimately meaningless.
(Yes, I’m being ironic to make a point)
But the question is not whether software development is political, it’s whether the software itself is.
Modern people usually do not believe in the efficient cause, the purpose with which the thing is created is commonly understood not to be a quality of the thing.
Yeah but everything can become anything with enough effort. Everything can be violence too for example. Everything can be nothing. Everything can be food (at least once).
Maybe, but politics even stretches to thoughts and constructs. “Ideas” and “Hope” are politics.
Those cannot become food in a physical sense.
“Politic” is in itself a construct. Not something physical.
Doesn’t change that something can be created without political intention, thought etc, no different than a sad poem written wasn’t created with nihilistic purposes even though it could possibly be applied to nihilism.
Right, things can be created without thinking of politics or with a political intention/motivation, as I said, but they still be political.
Politics is everything where some kind of discourse or debate happens, where something can be judged and assessed, about how power should be handled and influenced.
At that point, it’s you that’s making something political, not the thing itself being political.
Well, I don’t think you can “make something political”, everything that exists can be perceived and analyzed from different perspectives, one of which is its impact on the society, which is a political viewpoint. And pointing that perspective out to others is not “making it political”. It is about pointing out and making aware of an attribute that thing already has, wherever it was intended by the creator or not.
Wherever that raised a valid concern, is correct, or noteworthy is another topic.
Well, I don’t think you can “make something political”, everything that exists can be perceived and analyzed from different perspectives, one of which is its impact on the society, which is a political viewpoint.
Hence, you are making it political. Like you yourself said, politics in itself a construct, not a natural force.
The problem with taking the “everything is political” approach to things in life is that, much like physical reality, you end up diluting the impact something has.
If you spend energy is on making things that were not intended to be political and don’t bring significant harm by existing, you detract from things that were intentionally created to be political and do bring harm.
Instead of say debating if a browser has gendered pronouns that time was used protesting against bigots who went to actually remove gender rights, the world would be a better place. Because time is finite, and few have the patience of philosophers to ponder rhetorical orbs.
Hence, you are making it political. Like you yourself said, politics in itself a construct, not a natural force.
Wherever something is or isn’t political is decided by the society, all I can do is point out potential issues, but that is not “making it political”, just like pointing to something that is dead, doesn’t suddenly makes it die. No it was dead before.
Ah but see, politics much like the idea of death itself is still just philosophy. For some humans, the perishing of the body isn’t necessarily death either. Disagreement can be found where it can be made
Exactly.
All I can point out that I don’t see the a body moving, not breathing, no pulse and not reacting to external stimuli, all facts, but wherever or not this state is called “dead”, I can decide for myself, and groups of people will have a final say on. Other groups might disagree, politics might be involved, maybe the issue will be settled, maybe not. I, as an individual cannot say how the outcome will be.
Even if you decide to not release it for the public and keep it to yourself, can be a political issue. The mere existence of something can create a imbalance of capabilities, e.g. people with access to the software have advantages over people with no access to it, which can be political.
In this sense, politics is a weird lens to view such abilities/actions, rather than something like socioeconomics. Granted, government policy affects peoples’ wellbeing, which can definitely affect their political views, but making the jump to “everything is political” feels like a stretch?
Granted, government policy affects peoples’ wellbeing, which can definitely affect their political views, but making the jump to “everything is political” feels like a stretch?
Granted, maybe I was a bit too fast there. This should be better: “Everything has the potential to become political, as decided by the society.”
Someone alone cannot decide what is or isn’t politics. They need a couple of other people believing it too. But they can try to convince them. But software development most surely is, because it touches a lot of stuff, that many people think is political, even before getting into CoCs and used jargon.
Agreed. It seems like some people just want to shoehorn politics into everything. Like people who start complaining about branch names (master vs main), gendering or non-gendering words, arguing about mascots, insisting their code of conduct be implemented, or whatever else.
I’m sure there’s an appropriate meme for it.
Yes. The meme is the belief that societies divide neatly into "political’ and “non-political” systems. Those carrying the meme often find themselves confused as to why there are “political” aspects to the “non-political” systems that they interact with and rely upon. An easy temporary antidote to disrupt this meme: Politics is merely the discussion required to establish or change policies; the non-political systems are those which have no policies whatsoever, which are the systems that aren’t managed by humans. All human systems are political.
Sometimes people get to learn that politics is in everything managed by humans the hard way, I recommend against it
Am I the only one that finds it ironic to say all of that then include a license for your comment?
?
None of what you mentioned is actually about politics, it’s just a list of outrage-bait
Luke Smith is a self-proclaimed neo-reactionary.
I think the word you are looking for is crypto facist
and?
And what? I said the thing. Credit where credit is due he makes solid educational content outside of his “memes” and the swastika that was in his dot files.
press x to doubt.
he nevertheless seems more inclined towards anarchoindividualism or anprim. he has also discussed Graeber with great reverence. He does not spout identitarian bullshit left and right and is absolutely opposed to one of fascism’s fundamental values, that is the productivist cult of work. his contempt for cities is not grounded in some abstract nostalgia for a pure Aryan lifestyle, but individual interest and freedom. and fascism is a collectivist ideology.
I think the issue is people simply define politics differently, even differently within certain contexts, and there’s no right or wrong answer.
One could argue that it’s not possible to be truly “apolitical” in software, as even “doing nothing” is considered a strategic political move to some.
A recent controversial example (Ladybird browser) is a perfect demonstration IMO:
- user: “please change mention of ‘he’ to a gender-neutral term”
- Andreas: “please keep politics out of this”
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in. But to others, perhaps a vocal minority at the opposite extreme… it’s everything from bigotry to borderline terrorism.
I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, or that there can even be such a thing… everyone is just defining politics differently in that context.
I don’t think healthy discourse can be had until we can all learn to “agree to disagree” and move on when we aren’t willing to change our definition of subjective terms… or either come to a compromise.
But I think calling people right or wrong on a subjective term is a waste of time. You can try to change their mind, but if you fail, then it’s probably best to leave them alone instead of launching negative campaigns against people who have opinions you don’t like. Eventually that leads to war.
Defining the status quo as non-political is a political stance to support the status quo.
Everything is political by definition.
Technically I agree, but I think most people don’t put enough thought into it to realize that… like all the people that downvoted me ><
But like I said, in the moment of writing those things I think people are just narrowly thinking about specific things as political and others are not, even if that’s not “technically correct”, but nobody is perfect.
People are thinking that some things should change and others shouldn’t or don’t need to in those moments.
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in.
If wanting different pronouns/gender neutral language is political, then wanting to stick to “he” etc inherently is political, too. It’s completely incomprehensible to say that “position X” is political, but “position anti-X” is somehow not.
I think where people are making a mistake in Ladybird’s case is assuming he actively wanted to keep it as “him” on purpose, like as a retaliation or just because they said “gender-neutral”… like they’re taking it as some kind of personal attack or as if he was intentionally trying to make it into something bigger than a simple mistake, which could have been handled without mentioning gender-neutral (which is called a hot button issue for a reason).
Basically in Andreas’ eyes I think he would have actually accepted the PR if it didn’t include that term in it. He knows people are currently causing massive drama all over the Internet in recent years over things like this, he simply doesn’t want to get involved. And if that’s considered political to some, well, I think you just found the Paradox of Tolerance.
That’s a whole lot of assumptions, and cascading of them.
Gender-neutral is a factual, grammatical term. How do you call it if not that? The first PR in that case was rather neutral and not presumptuous or critical. It was a suggested improvement. But they made it [more] political by calling it political. And then denied it - which is inherently taking a political position.
Again, his opinions on what is or isn’t political in a certain context are not the same as yours. Neither is right or wrong, you just have a difference in opinion.
And what exactly do you call navigating different opinions and proposals for actions in a community setting? That is LITERALLY politics.
Yes, people can have different opinions on what is political, but that doesn’t mean those are equally valid. Politics has a clear definition. People can have different opinions in politics, but not really about what is politics.
From wiki:
“Politics (from Ancient Greek πολιτικά (politiká) ‘affairs of the cities’) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.”Saying they don’t want to do politics, while making a literal political decision is just completely contradictory. The minute the project turned into a community project,.it turned into a political project both by definition and necessity.
And what exactly do you call navigating different opinions and proposals for actions in a community setting? That is LITERALLY politics.
I call it yet another opinion. Like I said, I don’t think there is a point in trying to tell people how they should define things.
What’s considered politics to you is not the same for everyone, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Just because politics the phenomenon involves subjective opinions doesn’t mean the definition of the term is somehow subjective, or at least not any more or less subjective than any other term.
Opinions are subjective, but we still all pretty much agree what an opinion is and what isn’t. Because while opinions are subjective, the term “opinion” isn’t.This is literally the basis of human communication. If things and terms didn’t more or less mean the same thing for different speakers, we would be unable to communicate with each other.
If terms were generally completely subjective and up to the individual, there would be no point in you talking with me, or anyone else, because you could never be sure if who you are talking to even remotely means the thing that you think they mean.
It wasn’t political until a bunch of terminally online people can’t deal with a gendered pronoun made it political.
Telling a bunch of socially inept people to go pound sand is not a political act.
My friend it is you who is socially inept. Trans people are not basement dwelling “politicals” most of us are just normal every day folks with jobs and partners etc. who just want to be respected to the same level that everyone else is.
I have never even heard of this browser but it’s clear the maintainers have priorities of pushing an agenda rather than designing software to meet end user requirements and I wish them well and hope they can learn to set aside their ideology.
Fundamentally it also doesn’t even have to be about that either, gender-neutral is a factual grammatic term and it’s silly to suggest using gender-neutral pronouns is some sort of political act.
If anything it’s Andreas who made it political by taking it so personally in his head, which he did because of political bogeymen in his head, he got triggered by a term and now the chuddie defense force rushes to his side in the latest culture war battleground.
You are right, gender neutral pronouns aren’t political. Having an internet meltdown because someone didn’t use them is.
But as far as I understand someone just requested he did, and then it was Andreas who had the meltdown, hence the accusations of politicization?
- user: “please change mention of ‘he’ to a gender-neutral term”
- Andreas: “please keep politics out of this”
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in. But to others, perhaps a vocal minority at the opposite extreme… it’s everything from bigotry to borderline terrorism.
I literally cannot roll my eyes harder right now.
