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Is software political? (www.jstor.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Well, even if something isn't created "politically motivated" it can still be or become political.

What license do you choose? What platform do you choose to distribute it? What operating system do you support? What programming language and library dependencies do you have? On which platform do you manage your community or communicate with your customers or users? What feature do you add, or dismiss when writing the software. Etc. All of these are, or can become political issues.

Even if you decide to not release it for the public and keep it to yourself, can be a political issue. The mere existence of something can create a imbalance of capabilities, e.g. people with access to the software have advantages over people with no access to it, which can be political.

Even the mere fact that you possessed the resources, knowledge and time to create software can be or is political.

IMO, I would say everything is or can become a political issue. It just depends if there is some public interest and discourse. The intention or motivation of the developer doesn't matter.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but everything can become anything with enough effort. Everything can be violence too for example. Everything can be nothing. Everything can be food (at least once).

Someone making something political through that angle is no different than any other philosophy making something part of that philosophy.

Doesn't change that something can be created without political intention, thought etc, no different than a sad poem written wasn't created with nihilistic purposes even though it could possibly be applied to nihilism.

At that point, it's you that's making something political, not the thing itself being political. And that's fine, but if done constantly, it'll become just as insufferable as the angsty teenage nihilistic kid who saps joy out of every single thing you do. After all, end of the day we all die anyway, and we're just specs of astro microscopic dust in the greater universe with delusions of grandeur that is ultimately meaningless.

(Yes, I'm being ironic to make a point)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

But the question is not whether software development is political, it's whether the software itself is.

Modern people usually do not believe in the efficient cause, the purpose with which the thing is created is commonly understood not to be a quality of the thing.