<story><title>James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State, has died</title><url>https://nitter.poast.org/GerardoMunck/status/1815059432382067053</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sameoldtune</author><text>The concepts in Seeing Like A State are very relevant to programmers and to anyone trying to “change the world” with technology. One of the main points is that for a state to manage many people it tends to use power (hard and soft) to homogenize the populace. My belief is that tech necessarily does the same thing. Everyone in your app has permissions defined by some enum, a limited number of actions available, content moderation machinery.&lt;p&gt;This has effects that are inescapable, especially in the fields of medicine, mental health, education, social engagement. Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>strken</author><text>Depends which tech. I would argue that bash scripting or excel do almost the opposite.</text></comment>
<story><title>James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State, has died</title><url>https://nitter.poast.org/GerardoMunck/status/1815059432382067053</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sameoldtune</author><text>The concepts in Seeing Like A State are very relevant to programmers and to anyone trying to “change the world” with technology. One of the main points is that for a state to manage many people it tends to use power (hard and soft) to homogenize the populace. My belief is that tech necessarily does the same thing. Everyone in your app has permissions defined by some enum, a limited number of actions available, content moderation machinery.&lt;p&gt;This has effects that are inescapable, especially in the fields of medicine, mental health, education, social engagement. Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jagged-chisel</author><text>Diversity in [the featuresets of] software systems has led to reduced security. The only systems without the “rails” to keep the user on-track and out of danger zones are those that provide the user with the ability to program it themselves.&lt;p&gt;Must it be this way? Can we provide the complexity of flexibility while protecting our users’ finances and other important information? I don’t know if we can, but our track record isn’t good.</text></comment>