"no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
Something that I don't think a lot of "no politics in my tech" people realize, is that their favourite tech pastimes (like DIY computer building and lots of other kinds of tinkering) are always just one stab of capitalism away from ceasing to exist, and there is nothing they can do about it as a single individual, as long as they don't recognize the underlying power dynamics
speculation re: "no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
@joepie91 "no politics in tech" is an attempt to assert that their own reactionary status-quo politics are natural, neutral, and good...
...which comes with a belief that anything bad happening to them must be the fault of those they want to silence, because anything within their "no politics" would have been natural, neutral, and good to them.
they don't realize they're vulnerable to capitalism because they refuse to admit that capitalism is dangerous to anyone who doesn't deserve it.
re: "no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
@joepie91 This I do not understand. DIY has in my eyes been a practice that provides some degree of redundancy against corporate control
re: "no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
@polyfloyd While true, the type of DIY practiced by the crowd in question is often of a more off-the-shelf nature; it relies on the availability of ATX computer components (motherboards, CPUs, etc.), for example, which is entirely dependent on the continued interest of manufacturers to produce those things.
That's not necessarily a *bad* thing, but it means that it's extremely vulnerable to capitalism; if manufacturers decide that it's more profitable to only manufacture integrated systems (which is where things are headed), that's just the end of it.
This is distinct from more punk-like DIY, where the point is to find novel (not manufacturer-approved) ways to use things that might otherwise be considered useless.
re: "no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
@joepie91 Oh lol, I interpreted DIY computer building as soldering transistors on a proto-board for some reason. Thanks for clarifying, this makes sense to me now.
"no politics in tech" commentary, slightly doom-y
@joepie91 It took me a long time to even start to recognize power dynamics. DeWaal's "Chimpanzee Politics" was such an eye-opener for me. But I'm not sure how to nudge others to that sort of epiphany. At a talk Kent Beck once said, "I went into computers to get away from people," which I think is common, so I can see why the no-politics-in-tech people would be reluctant to accept that politics pervades tech.