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Its hard to take seriously the argument that "tech is neutral" when it concerns software. One could maybe make this argument for the hardware underneath (the ch
by college_physics 4y ago
Its hard to take seriously the argument that "tech is neutral" when it concerns software. One could maybe make this argument for the hardware underneath (the chips and the cables). They are called after all "general purpose computing" devices and the packets moving around are general purpose streams of bits as well [0].
But software is not "tech". It is the explicit expression and projection of cultural objectives and values onto a particular type of tech. You can take the exact precise hardware we have today and reprogram a million different worlds on it, some better, some worse.
Developers are simply the willing executioners of prevalent power structures. Deal with it. If you have a moral backbone (i.e., you don't agree with the prevalent morality as expressed in what the software industry currently does) do something about it.
[0] Ofcourse upon deeper examination overall system design (e.g. how client or server heavy the configuration, what kind of UI is promoted etc) is not neutral either. Cultural/political/economic choices creep * everywhere*
- davidivadavid 4y ago> But software is not "tech". It is the explicit expression and projection of cultural objectives and values onto a particular type of tech. You can take the exact precise hardware we have today and reprogram a million different worlds on it, some better, some worse. But all of them with computing as a cultural artifact of some kind — and certainly not a "neutral" one. I've basically come to think of the idea of "general purpose computing" as basically a trojan horse for the naive "tech is neutral" POV. "Making things computable faster" is not a "neutral" change of the universe, it's a step in a specific direction, it defines the boundaries of a particular future cone at the exception of many others.