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.
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.