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Is software political? (www.jstor.org)

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

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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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[–] galanthus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month 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.