Sometimes junior software people ask me what relevance studying political science has on technology work.
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Sometimes junior software people ask me what relevance studying political science has on technology work. I would just show them hachyderm admins' doc, which is infra and politics and surveillance and opsec https://community.hachyderm.io/blog/2024/11/29/ensuring-hachyderms-future-improving-safety-resilience-through-strategic-placement-of-infrastructure/
EVERYTHING is politics
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Your code doesn't live in a vacuum. Where are the computers hosted? What policies does the country hosting the data center have on data sovereignty and privacy? Some countries say you cannot host their citizens' data on foreign servers. Is the country at risk of war, of having a large neighbor cutting undersea cables that provide access? Which major actors in international geopolitics can have a spat that will cause supply chain issues in hardware overnight? It's all politics
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
This decoupling of politics and technology leads to a lack of understanding between two of the most important (to me) global forces. This also leads to people on one side not knowing much about the other. Lawmakers not knowing enough about technology to effectively regulate. Tech people believing the tech they build is neutral, but that is thoroughly imbued with *their* values in every meaningful way, who then are unable or unwilling to examine the impact that the two have, together, on society.
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@skinnylatte This is the article I often go back to when people say "tech is apolitical". It was written in 1980 and it's still very relevant today. Possibly even more so given the centralization of power.
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@MayInToronto hehe, i have also posted this on my readling list
Reading List
Reading List Many of these readings from a Data Ethics class at the University of San Francisco, syllabus prepared by Dr Rachel Thomas....
Public Sector AI (publicsectorai.tech)
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Indeed everything is political.
Such as the decision to see a future USA as a threat but not today's Germany. Germany is a threat to those who are against genocide and war crimes.
As you say, everything is political.
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@rzeta0 indeed. That made me raise my eyebrows but hopefully they’ll revisit the decision (a lot of Fediverse hosting is indeed centered in Germany)
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@skinnylatte @rzeta0 it's on our radar, and there's a callout in the post to that effect. the focus for now is to make sure we're agile enough to pick up and move should we need to.
the immediate impending threat is the US, so we'll start there and then roll any learnings/efficiencies into moving/decentering Germany, should it come to that.
