When I started becoming part of the IT community here in Mauritius, I decided to try my best not to be political on social media. The main "hub" of IT people in the community are on Twitter, and that's where I have an account. In my bio, for the longest time, I had the phrase "I talk tech". And why just tech? Because that's what I was on Twitter for, that's what the community was for. And I definitely did not want to cause trouble in the community over a bunch of politics.
I kept to my "no politics" rule as best as possible, even when politics became hauntingly pervasive on the platform (elections, US laws & supreme court). I had an alt account where I could talk about politics, just not under my name. But now, I think it's necessary to address the elephant in the room. Tech is inherently political, and saying otherwise is akin to an ostrich sticking its head in the dirt.
What Counts As Political?
I'll start off with a fun one. Encryption is political. "But Alex," you must be saying, "encryption is just a means to prevent bad guys from seeing my credit card details". But it's not. Encryption is protection from bad guys. And bad guys is a very vague term; for some it means Russian 1337 hackers. For others, it means governments and oppressive regimes.
Okay, maybe encryption is just low hanging fruit.
Let's maybe look at cryptocurrencies? Well crypto (not cryptography) was initially intended to be a form of semi-anonymous and decentalised currency system outside of the jurisdiction of banks. Then you have Monero, another crypto promising full anonymity and an even more robust decentralisation. Both have built communities out of distrust of the government and banks, or to evade intrusive monitoring.
The Means To An End
It is important to recognise that CS, and more broadly technology, embeds values. It is never neutral. It rearranges power. And as to where that power is shifted to, I'm sure you can figure it out.
Gen AI is political. You cannot tell me that there is some AI out there built without copious amounts of bias. Even training data is full of human bias. Why is that? Because AI trains from human-created data - Wikipedia articles, blogposts, news websites etc etc... And all this writing created by humans is not created in a vacuum - it is created under certain social and political conditions.
It sends me back to the time at school when, in literature classes, we would laugh at in-depth analyses on why the author specified the curtains were blue. What's the point, right? There's probably no reason. The author didn't mean anything specific, just that the curtains were blue. But the thing is that there is always a reason.
Social media is, unsurprisingly, political. I'm not talking about the content, which is obviously political, but rather the algorithms which keep the platforms alive. All mainstream social media have a "For You" tab, where an algorithm finds new content for you which it thinks you will enjoy. Now the algorithm is a complete black box, and offers the possibility for social media owners (Musk, Mark, Bytedance) to alter suggested content to support their agendas. On a related note, if you're interested in a freer (but nonetheless political) alternative, try the Fediverse. I did write a lot more complaints on Twitter here.
The Lies of Tech
- Technology is a tool. It is apolitical and ethically neutral.
This is wrong. Technology inherits the values and bias of its creators. - Technology is what makes the world great.
Don't try fooling yourself that the world is great. Let alone that tech makes it so. - Better technology will fix the problems of today's tech.
There is no objective "better" technology, simply new technology built to new and evolving needs. - Tech is driven by brilliant individuals, advanced by the marketplace.
Tech is driven by billionaires and oligarches who care only about themselves and their pockets.