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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
Anti Commercial-AI license
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?
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None of what you mentioned is actually about politics, it’s just a list of outrage-bait