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.
I think the issue is people simply define politics differently, even differently within certain contexts, and there’s no right or wrong answer.
One could argue that it’s not possible to be truly “apolitical” in software, as even “doing nothing” is considered a strategic political move to some.
A recent controversial example (Ladybird browser) is a perfect demonstration IMO:
- user: “please change mention of ‘he’ to a gender-neutral term”
- Andreas: “please keep politics out of this”
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in. But to others, perhaps a vocal minority at the opposite extreme… it’s everything from bigotry to borderline terrorism.
I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, or that there can even be such a thing… everyone is just defining politics differently in that context.
I don’t think healthy discourse can be had until we can all learn to “agree to disagree” and move on when we aren’t willing to change our definition of subjective terms… or either come to a compromise.
But I think calling people right or wrong on a subjective term is a waste of time. You can try to change their mind, but if you fail, then it’s probably best to leave them alone instead of launching negative campaigns against people who have opinions you don’t like. Eventually that leads to war.
- user: “please change mention of ‘he’ to a gender-neutral term”
- Andreas: “please keep politics out of this”
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in. But to others, perhaps a vocal minority at the opposite extreme… it’s everything from bigotry to borderline terrorism.
I literally cannot roll my eyes harder right now.
Now to some, dare I say most, this is a perfectly reasonable position for Andreas to be in.
If wanting different pronouns/gender neutral language is political, then wanting to stick to “he” etc inherently is political, too. It’s completely incomprehensible to say that “position X” is political, but “position anti-X” is somehow not.
I think where people are making a mistake in Ladybird’s case is assuming he actively wanted to keep it as “him” on purpose, like as a retaliation or just because they said “gender-neutral”… like they’re taking it as some kind of personal attack or as if he was intentionally trying to make it into something bigger than a simple mistake, which could have been handled without mentioning gender-neutral (which is called a hot button issue for a reason).
Basically in Andreas’ eyes I think he would have actually accepted the PR if it didn’t include that term in it. He knows people are currently causing massive drama all over the Internet in recent years over things like this, he simply doesn’t want to get involved. And if that’s considered political to some, well, I think you just found the Paradox of Tolerance.
That’s a whole lot of assumptions, and cascading of them.
Gender-neutral is a factual, grammatical term. How do you call it if not that? The first PR in that case was rather neutral and not presumptuous or critical. It was a suggested improvement. But they made it [more] political by calling it political. And then denied it - which is inherently taking a political position.
It wasn’t political until a bunch of terminally online people can’t deal with a gendered pronoun made it political.
Telling a bunch of socially inept people to go pound sand is not a political act.
My friend it is you who is socially inept. Trans people are not basement dwelling “politicals” most of us are just normal every day folks with jobs and partners etc. who just want to be respected to the same level that everyone else is.
I have never even heard of this browser but it’s clear the maintainers have priorities of pushing an agenda rather than designing software to meet end user requirements and I wish them well and hope they can learn to set aside their ideology.
Fundamentally it also doesn’t even have to be about that either, gender-neutral is a factual grammatic term and it’s silly to suggest using gender-neutral pronouns is some sort of political act.
If anything it’s Andreas who made it political by taking it so personally in his head, which he did because of political bogeymen in his head, he got triggered by a term and now the chuddie defense force rushes to his side in the latest culture war battleground.
Defining the status quo as non-political is a political stance to support the status quo.
Everything is political by definition.
Technically I agree, but I think most people don’t put enough thought into it to realize that… like all the people that downvoted me ><
But like I said, in the moment of writing those things I think people are just narrowly thinking about specific things as political and others are not, even if that’s not “technically correct”, but nobody is perfect.
