• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I think software engineering played a significant part in moving the focus away from scientists in the modern era. Before computing scientists were the huge driver of everything, and they held a position of influence in society as a result of that. When computing came around software engineering happened and ever since then almost all “progress” in society has been through the lens of the creation of more and more software infrastructure. Eventually this is to reach a point of general saturation where almost all problems have some sort of software-engineering solution and science is going to be the only pathway forwards again, returning to the past dynamic. Obviously science also didn’t go away during this time but for the capitalists it’s quite obvious that software through techbros has dominated everything for some time now. This blindspot will hurt them more later when they eventually come out of the fog that software dominance has created.

    • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’s something I noticed too. Computer science doesn’t seem to have as much “science”, and in STEM. The s and m are much quieter than the T and E. Not to say that engineering isn’t cool as shit even though I never majored in it (right now I’m weighing between CS and bioinformatics). Just that the US is turning itself into a one-trick pony.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Globalisation creates one-trick ponies. The entire world has been moving towards each country specialising into a very very specific thing, whether it’s technology or financial services or w/e.

    • Personal computing is a big part of this, too, I think. Software engineering is very materially different from “traditional” forms of research because there’s not a huge amount of capital and personnel that’s necessary to do said research

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I think it’s probably not dissimilar to like, actual engineering. This too was wildly popular among the capitalists up until it matured to the point where almost all human problems have an engineering solution outside of megaprojects that are too high risk (and longterm) for the capitalists to want to expose themselves.

        They pursue short term and low risk with highest gain. Eventually software will run out of this, it will mature to the point that the only available projects are so massive and high risk that they look elsewhere. When this happens new science becomes the highest impact potential again and they start paying attention to it, even elevating it to the forefront of national news because they want to hear more of it so they keep up with the latest thing. Right now they elevate tech to the forefront because it’s their world and they want to hear more about tech to be at the forefront of new things to try and get on that gravy train early. You can trace the difference between the 20s-60s and today back to the computer changing this environment, the bourgeoisie pushed science into the background and brought software engineering to the foreground, it’s not going to be infinite though. They will want science again when it can offer nothing more to them.