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Is software political? (www.jstor.org)

submitted 3 months ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/opensource@programming.dev

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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.

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[–] ericjmorey@programming.dev 32 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Defining the status quo as non-political is a political stance to support the status quo.

Everything is political by definition.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ericjmorey@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

People are thinking that some things should change and others shouldn't or don't need to in those moments.