Opensource

1533 readers

36 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

Is software political? (www.jstor.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/opensource

45 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 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.