…a social problem like inter-group warfare can be greatly reduced by the technology of better communications systems.
Here, I would argue that you example actually presents a case for the same tech increasing the severity of tensions. Consider what happens, for example, when someone at the helm of a tech company or in government and with access to that helm decides to up the ante on propaganda. Better communications tech, better message propagation.
…you seem to be making the case that a software team's inability to see all ends, or the deadline pressure that causes them to miss bugs, belongs in the same category as a software design decision….
O'Neal's book has some pretty grievous examples of missed "bugs," so grievous, in my opinion, that calling them merely "bugs" hardly removes the insult they provoked. That's where I was going with calling these situations "political" as in a situation where one party is hardly being politic.
While I do like your twig tech example, I still take issue with lumping all tech, from twigs on up, as a group. Each tool is developed for a task. Even two tools for the same task can approach the task in such different ways that to lump them both as "tech" raises interesting questions, and (hopefully) forces people to recognize other approaches exist.
When a person uses a device and they personally have almost no understanding of how it works…
…the onus of responsibility lies on the developer.
Sadly, US laws have largely missed that responsibility. In the UK, it's called the Duty of Care; in the EU, the laws lean more toward a phrase that for the moment escapes me, but it can be summarized as "if it was reasonable for you to foresee the harms from the practice, you should have done so." Our US ticky-box compliance culture has given a pass to the harms currently underway.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2023-02-06 07:58 pm (UTC)Here, I would argue that you example actually presents a case for the same tech increasing the severity of tensions. Consider what happens, for example, when someone at the helm of a tech company or in government and with access to that helm decides to up the ante on propaganda. Better communications tech, better message propagation.
…you seem to be making the case that a software team's inability to see all ends, or the deadline pressure that causes them to miss bugs, belongs in the same category as a software design decision….
O'Neal's book has some pretty grievous examples of missed "bugs," so grievous, in my opinion, that calling them merely "bugs" hardly removes the insult they provoked. That's where I was going with calling these situations "political" as in a situation where one party is hardly being politic.
While I do like your twig tech example, I still take issue with lumping all tech, from twigs on up, as a group. Each tool is developed for a task. Even two tools for the same task can approach the task in such different ways that to lump them both as "tech" raises interesting questions, and (hopefully) forces people to recognize other approaches exist.
When a person uses a device and they personally have almost no understanding of how it works…
…the onus of responsibility lies on the developer.
Sadly, US laws have largely missed that responsibility. In the UK, it's called the Duty of Care; in the EU, the laws lean more toward a phrase that for the moment escapes me, but it can be summarized as "if it was reasonable for you to foresee the harms from the practice, you should have done so." Our US ticky-box compliance culture has given a pass to the harms currently underway.