4 ms·

"...and technological choices are politically influenced" Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. The course o

"...and technological choices are politically influenced" Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. The course of war, peace and espionage may be determined by politics but the choice of technology is totally influenced by the problems war and espionage may present that technology needs to be able to solve. You can't build a "liberal" radar or a "conservative" radar or a downright "communist" radar. You can just build a radar to detect aircraft.

danso 14y ago
> Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. Let me guess: you've never worked in government contracting before?
- photon137 14y ago
  My statement still holds: the lowest quote is part of the problem. (And to answer your question: nope - and I hope not to).
mcguire 14y ago
True, but you can build a radar that displays flocks of geese as F-15's (to make up a bogus example) if that satisfies the needs of your client. Ignoring the non-technical aspects of technology is as short-sighted as ignoring technical aspects you don't happen to care for.
eli 14y ago
You're seriously suggesting cyber security research has nothing to do with politics? Technology is not an independent force of nature. It's the product of people, and people are inherently connected to politics.
- photon137 14y ago
  I'm seriously suggesting the underlying technology has nothing to do with politics. One can discuss buffer overruns and CSRFs and what not without any political overtones whatsoever (or should be able to). There is no area of human life that hasn't been impacted by technology and very few of them actually involve politics in the traditional sense. Forgiving tech media that covers political stories in the guise of "tech" news because tech is "inseparable" from politics is naive, at best. It is separable and should be. But then again, I understand media is indeed inseparable from politics. "...people are inherently connected to politics." I disagree. This varies from society to society - it might be true for America, not true for other places. People in those places know what the sphere of influence of politics is and many areas are totally separated from politics. In the US, in contrast, almost anything can be (and routinely is) made a political issue.
  - eli 14y ago
    Huh? What is your definition of "politics"? What society are you thinking of? North Korea? Even there (maybe especially there) politics plays a huge role in technology.
  - sciurus 14y ago
    I'm reminded of this quote: "Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves. So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested?" - Michel Foucault
    - photon137 14y ago
      I agree politics is a very important part of our society and people should be interested in it. But technology is a means to solve problems whether they're presented by the struggle of humans to make their life better against the elements - in which case the solution would ought to be non-political - or whether they are presented by humans living, interacting and governing themselves in a society - in which case a solution may be driven by politics but is a solution nonetheless. A blueprint of a missile doesn't say that it's driven by a particular ideology - it's just a solution for a political/social problem. Anyone can discuss it without involving politics. However, humans by their very nature add context to things (in this case, it'd be political) and that's perfectly alright. My argument is - ok, it is possible to discuss these things productively without involving politics or political opinions at all.
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  People: let me provide a little advice, please. If you click on the poster's name you can see their avg karma. You don't have to respond to just any dumb thing said out here, especially not when a person's comments are consistently voted as not useful -- e.g., photon137. That's why those scores are public. When someone tries to cast a complicated political question like this in terms of yup and nope, just assume they are a dumbass and move along. And have faith that other reasonable people will do the same.
  - greedo 14y ago
    1. Ad hominem isn't really a good argument for ignoring a poorly composed post. 2. If you think that avg karma is a good metric for measuring the usefulness of a comment, you might be confused about confirmation bias...
    - jessedhillon 14y ago
      1. The argument isn't to ignore the comment because the author is dumb. The argument is to ignore the comment because the comment is dumb, prima facie. That is, a reasonable person who has thought about the issues at hand would easily conclude that the comment is not the product of serious effort or consideration. 2. I'm offering a heuristic, not correlation.
      - greedo 14y ago
        Backpedaling when it's plain to see that you called him a dumbass doesn't work. You didn't attack his comment, you attacked his history of posts, using a flawed metric.
  - sp332 14y ago
    photon137 and eli have the same average karma.
    - jessedhillon 14y ago
      I don't know if I was mistaken then, but I thought it was < 2.0 when I looked previously.
jacalata 14y ago
Right. So you're not aware of Richard Stallman? You've never met a rabid 'M$ $UX!' guy?
- photon137 14y ago
  I can still write software, discuss ideas and think about architecture etc etc. while totally ignoring both of those guys.

danso 14y ago

> Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. Let me guess: you've never worked in government contracting before?

photon137 14y ago
My statement still holds: the lowest quote is part of the problem. (And to answer your question: nope - and I hope not to).

mcguire 14y ago

True, but you can build a radar that displays flocks of geese as F-15's (to make up a bogus example) if that satisfies the needs of your client. Ignoring the non-technical aspects of technology is as short-sighted as ignoring technical aspects you don't happen to care for.

eli 14y ago

You're seriously suggesting cyber security research has nothing to do with politics? Technology is not an independent force of nature. It's the product of people, and people are inherently connected to politics.

photon137 14y ago
I'm seriously suggesting the underlying technology has nothing to do with politics. One can discuss buffer overruns and CSRFs and what not without any political overtones whatsoever (or should be able to). There is no area of human life that hasn't been impacted by technology and very few of them actually involve politics in the traditional sense. Forgiving tech media that covers political stories in the guise of "tech" news because tech is "inseparable" from politics is naive, at best. It is separable and should be. But then again, I understand media is indeed inseparable from politics. "...people are inherently connected to politics." I disagree. This varies from society to society - it might be true for America, not true for other places. People in those places know what the sphere of influence of politics is and many areas are totally separated from politics. In the US, in contrast, almost anything can be (and routinely is) made a political issue.
- eli 14y ago
  Huh? What is your definition of "politics"? What society are you thinking of? North Korea? Even there (maybe especially there) politics plays a huge role in technology.
- sciurus 14y ago
  I'm reminded of this quote: "Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves. So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested?" - Michel Foucault
  - photon137 14y ago
    I agree politics is a very important part of our society and people should be interested in it. But technology is a means to solve problems whether they're presented by the struggle of humans to make their life better against the elements - in which case the solution would ought to be non-political - or whether they are presented by humans living, interacting and governing themselves in a society - in which case a solution may be driven by politics but is a solution nonetheless. A blueprint of a missile doesn't say that it's driven by a particular ideology - it's just a solution for a political/social problem. Anyone can discuss it without involving politics. However, humans by their very nature add context to things (in this case, it'd be political) and that's perfectly alright. My argument is - ok, it is possible to discuss these things productively without involving politics or political opinions at all.
jessedhillon 14y ago
People: let me provide a little advice, please. If you click on the poster's name you can see their avg karma. You don't have to respond to just any dumb thing said out here, especially not when a person's comments are consistently voted as not useful -- e.g., photon137. That's why those scores are public. When someone tries to cast a complicated political question like this in terms of yup and nope, just assume they are a dumbass and move along. And have faith that other reasonable people will do the same.
- greedo 14y ago
  1. Ad hominem isn't really a good argument for ignoring a poorly composed post. 2. If you think that avg karma is a good metric for measuring the usefulness of a comment, you might be confused about confirmation bias...
  - jessedhillon 14y ago
    1. The argument isn't to ignore the comment because the author is dumb. The argument is to ignore the comment because the comment is dumb, prima facie. That is, a reasonable person who has thought about the issues at hand would easily conclude that the comment is not the product of serious effort or consideration. 2. I'm offering a heuristic, not correlation.
    - greedo 14y ago
      Backpedaling when it's plain to see that you called him a dumbass doesn't work. You didn't attack his comment, you attacked his history of posts, using a flawed metric.
- sp332 14y ago
  photon137 and eli have the same average karma.
  - jessedhillon 14y ago
    I don't know if I was mistaken then, but I thought it was < 2.0 when I looked previously.

jacalata 14y ago

Right. So you're not aware of Richard Stallman? You've never met a rabid 'M$ $UX!' guy?

photon137 14y ago
I can still write software, discuss ideas and think about architecture etc etc. while totally ignoring both of those guys.