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I want the politics of protest in software. I want us as a community to be better prepared for the responsibility of our profession—like engineers—and better st

I want the politics of protest in software. I want us as a community to be better prepared for the responsibility of our profession—like engineers—and better stewards of our society, and to protect people from the dangers of sabotage while advocating for the people who rightly see sabotage as a viable option… possibly the only one. We have extraordinary privilege and power as workers. We have the power to make the world better. The people who want to make it worse already see us and our domain as an attack vector. We cannot change that. We should rise to the occasion, not declare neutrality in its face.

bigDinosaur 5y ago
You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? The possibilities for that are endless and almost all of them are bad. These areas must not be political to prevent spirals of politicisation (remember, if this becomes the norm then it'd justify your political enemies doing the exact same thing). As far as I am aware, engineers do not inject politics into bridges or rail infrastructure or anything else, and though they do have codes of conduct and legal responsibility for what they sign off on that's not so much political as it is discouraging negligence. Nothing in my position is against engineers having political opinions, or campaigning for what they want, or resigning or whatever. I just think that that's not appropriate in terms of the actual service they concretely provide to society during their employment.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  > You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? It’s already political. Those targets are already used when people see fit to use them. What I want is for us to stop pretending that there’s a possibility of a multi-trillion dollar industry that can be absent political impact and conflict. It cannot happen. We need to be engaged politically because many of those impacts are or will be harmful like you say. We also need to be engaged because our neutrality determines what is and isn’t acceptable as a status quo. And yes, in certain very specific circumstances we need to decide whether our conscience rejects, accepts, even abides or joins certain demonstrative or material actions even if they’re generally out of bounds. We live in a world. It’s nowhere near so compartmentalized.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    # insert "{{President Biden's}} poor economic policies have led to..." into db “Error: PoliticalProtestInSQLModule error at or near ‘poor economic policies’ - Postgres has determined that you are ignorant and wrong, and includes this warning in the off chance you are open to listening to reason. Be thankful we still let you insert the string into the DB.” See the problem? Again, you're failing to distinguish between politics of protest at the point of service and elsewhere. Including this at the point of service is literally how you get these disasters like sabotage, but even before that it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have political messages in the software we use. Does the current war of aggression against Ukraine mean that it's okay to include 'Putin is a real piece of shit' in his wikipedia article? No, because obviously that's just a road to destroying its credibility and generating far worse outcomes for everyone.
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      Look, I’m not new to this discussion. My interest in acts of protest is rooted in anti-colonialism. It predates the internet, electricity, and the majority of the British Empire. It spans centuries of wars and the rise and decline of organized labor. I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit, because he certainly is. I’m not failing to distinguish anything. We, humans, live on a planet with other humans. We make complex choices every day about how we participate and the compromises we do or don’t accept. Every technology that has any meaning for real people has a role in that. We cannot be neutral even if we wish to be, we don’t even know what neutral is. When I say that my interest is rooted in anti-colonialism, I’m trying to be very clear: people who were and have been regarded as non-existent rightly used disruption and even violence to be more seen and heard. It doesn’t have to be violent. It does have to be disruptive. You don’t get to determine the terms of that, you just have to accept that what’s neutral to you might not be neutral to others… and let your moral judgment be what it is. Edit: and yes I did see if I could edit the Putin page to say he’s a piece of shit, of course I could not. But I certainly would have.
      - hn92726819 5y ago
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? I think I agree with you in some ways, but this is an odd example to give of something that’s not politicized. The prioritization of who gets protection in a light cycle, who the light cycle timing is optimized for, who gets detected to influence the signaling and who doesn’t… those are absolutely political choices. (And here in the US where I am they almost always prioritize the movement of cars above all else.)

bigDinosaur 5y ago

You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? The possibilities for that are endless and almost all of them are bad. These areas must not be political to prevent spirals of politicisation (remember, if this becomes the norm then it'd justify your political enemies doing the exact same thing). As far as I am aware, engineers do not inject politics into bridges or rail infrastructure or anything else, and though they do have codes of conduct and legal responsibility for what they sign off on that's not so much political as it is discouraging negligence. Nothing in my position is against engineers having political opinions, or campaigning for what they want, or resigning or whatever. I just think that that's not appropriate in terms of the actual service they concretely provide to society during their employment.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
> You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? It’s already political. Those targets are already used when people see fit to use them. What I want is for us to stop pretending that there’s a possibility of a multi-trillion dollar industry that can be absent political impact and conflict. It cannot happen. We need to be engaged politically because many of those impacts are or will be harmful like you say. We also need to be engaged because our neutrality determines what is and isn’t acceptable as a status quo. And yes, in certain very specific circumstances we need to decide whether our conscience rejects, accepts, even abides or joins certain demonstrative or material actions even if they’re generally out of bounds. We live in a world. It’s nowhere near so compartmentalized.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  # insert "{{President Biden's}} poor economic policies have led to..." into db “Error: PoliticalProtestInSQLModule error at or near ‘poor economic policies’ - Postgres has determined that you are ignorant and wrong, and includes this warning in the off chance you are open to listening to reason. Be thankful we still let you insert the string into the DB.” See the problem? Again, you're failing to distinguish between politics of protest at the point of service and elsewhere. Including this at the point of service is literally how you get these disasters like sabotage, but even before that it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have political messages in the software we use. Does the current war of aggression against Ukraine mean that it's okay to include 'Putin is a real piece of shit' in his wikipedia article? No, because obviously that's just a road to destroying its credibility and generating far worse outcomes for everyone.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Look, I’m not new to this discussion. My interest in acts of protest is rooted in anti-colonialism. It predates the internet, electricity, and the majority of the British Empire. It spans centuries of wars and the rise and decline of organized labor. I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit, because he certainly is. I’m not failing to distinguish anything. We, humans, live on a planet with other humans. We make complex choices every day about how we participate and the compromises we do or don’t accept. Every technology that has any meaning for real people has a role in that. We cannot be neutral even if we wish to be, we don’t even know what neutral is. When I say that my interest is rooted in anti-colonialism, I’m trying to be very clear: people who were and have been regarded as non-existent rightly used disruption and even violence to be more seen and heard. It doesn’t have to be violent. It does have to be disruptive. You don’t get to determine the terms of that, you just have to accept that what’s neutral to you might not be neutral to others… and let your moral judgment be what it is. Edit: and yes I did see if I could edit the Putin page to say he’s a piece of shit, of course I could not. But I certainly would have.
    - hn92726819 5y ago
ryukafalz 5y ago
> I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? I think I agree with you in some ways, but this is an odd example to give of something that’s not politicized. The prioritization of who gets protection in a light cycle, who the light cycle timing is optimized for, who gets detected to influence the signaling and who doesn’t… those are absolutely political choices. (And here in the US where I am they almost always prioritize the movement of cars above all else.)