Opensource

1308 readers

10 users here now

A community for discussion about open source software! Ask questions, share knowledge, share news, or post interesting stuff related to it!

Credits

Icon base by Lorc under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

⠀

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

pylapp@programming.dev

Is software political? (www.jstor.org)

submitted 3 months ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/opensource@programming.dev

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (17 children)

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.

load more comments (15 replies)