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.
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)
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.
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.
Am I the only one that finds it ironic to say all of that then include a license for your comment?
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.
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.
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.
- 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.