4 ms·

What were the political views of the people who wrote my current OS? My current browser? The channels on my chip that the electrons flow? The drive of the serve

What were the political views of the people who wrote my current OS? My current browser? The channels on my chip that the electrons flow? The drive of the server that stores this comment? Can you truly be woke if a bigot designed your RAM?

captainmuon 5y ago
For a second, don't distinguish between political and other views. The ideals of the developers certainly shape the product. - Apple: Elegant, powerful, not much user choice but generally well-thought-out. And every bit is designed such that Apple keeps control of the platform. - Unix hackers: Powerful command line interface, do one thing and do it well, KISS, adherence to tradtion (manpages etc.) - Moxie Marlinspike: Concerned about user's privacy, thinks usability is paramount for adoption -> creates Signal etc. Now imagine an OS written by the Chinese communist party. Or a file-sharing program written by an anticapitalist group. Or a P2P marketplace by a drug cartel. Or a genealogy service created by white supremacists. The (political) views of a creator are very relevant, if you believe the creation is used to further their goals!
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  >The (political) views of a creator are very relevant Agree completely because it shapes the actual intent of the creation. More just hinting if you could truly do an audit I'm not sure you'd be happy with what you found. For example, an operating system that requires all financial transactions that go through it has to take 30% to go into the wallet of the creators doesn't really seem particularly left leaning...
  - astrange 5y ago
    This is basically a stronger form of Conway's law, the weak form of which is definitely true (and should be respected when planning projects.)
- nemo44x 5y ago
  It doesn’t really matter though since whatever is useful will be co-opted and used by the technocratic and atomizing system we live amongst. For example the creators of the first rockets wanted to go to the moon, that was their goal - which eventually happened. But not until well after it was co-opted to create ICBM’s.
disconcision 5y ago
i feel like there's a spectrum here. i can't and don't pursue absolute ideological purity, but in a dense ecosystem of competing ideas, i feel pretty okay opting not to play baronet in some wannabe despot's homesteading fantasy
Barrin92 5y ago
the difference is that unlike RAM or some other random technology Urbit is quite explicitly a sort of socio-economic experiment. The 'digital homesteading', the liege-like relationship between owners of "stars/galaxies" etc individuals and people in their respective domains, the scarcity and deflationary aspect of it, it's very much a 1:1 software version of the political views of the original creator. The things that differentiate Urbit are all in the mechanisms of governance that users of the system take part in. So rather than thinking of it as a 'technology' it is much more like a political experiment.

captainmuon 5y ago

For a second, don't distinguish between political and other views. The ideals of the developers certainly shape the product. - Apple: Elegant, powerful, not much user choice but generally well-thought-out. And every bit is designed such that Apple keeps control of the platform. - Unix hackers: Powerful command line interface, do one thing and do it well, KISS, adherence to tradtion (manpages etc.) - Moxie Marlinspike: Concerned about user's privacy, thinks usability is paramount for adoption -> creates Signal etc. Now imagine an OS written by the Chinese communist party. Or a file-sharing program written by an anticapitalist group. Or a P2P marketplace by a drug cartel. Or a genealogy service created by white supremacists. The (political) views of a creator are very relevant, if you believe the creation is used to further their goals!

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
>The (political) views of a creator are very relevant Agree completely because it shapes the actual intent of the creation. More just hinting if you could truly do an audit I'm not sure you'd be happy with what you found. For example, an operating system that requires all financial transactions that go through it has to take 30% to go into the wallet of the creators doesn't really seem particularly left leaning...
- astrange 5y ago
  This is basically a stronger form of Conway's law, the weak form of which is definitely true (and should be respected when planning projects.)
nemo44x 5y ago
It doesn’t really matter though since whatever is useful will be co-opted and used by the technocratic and atomizing system we live amongst. For example the creators of the first rockets wanted to go to the moon, that was their goal - which eventually happened. But not until well after it was co-opted to create ICBM’s.

disconcision 5y ago

i feel like there's a spectrum here. i can't and don't pursue absolute ideological purity, but in a dense ecosystem of competing ideas, i feel pretty okay opting not to play baronet in some wannabe despot's homesteading fantasy

Barrin92 5y ago

the difference is that unlike RAM or some other random technology Urbit is quite explicitly a sort of socio-economic experiment. The 'digital homesteading', the liege-like relationship between owners of "stars/galaxies" etc individuals and people in their respective domains, the scarcity and deflationary aspect of it, it's very much a 1:1 software version of the political views of the original creator. The things that differentiate Urbit are all in the mechanisms of governance that users of the system take part in. So rather than thinking of it as a 'technology' it is much more like a political experiment.