Post
Many developers (certainly #opensource people) have a humble attitude towards software. They know how buggy, transient, unfinished, unreliable it typically is.
But if you take one or two steps back and consider the totality of digital infrastructure, you realise how dramatically important it has become and how it is reshaping society at a pace and a depth that is historically unique.
The so-called #techbros know this. Relatively simple tools & algorithmic inventions can have oversized impact.
A totally generic technology like software that can have oversized negative impact can by the same token have also oversized positive impact. How the balance plays out depends on how it is absorbed, what people choose to learn, design, build, and implement.
In turn that depends on pre-existing conditions, how economies and financial systems empower one activity over another. This is where it gets interesting. Because "economies" and "finance" are built on pre-digital, paper based "software".
The digital society that formed over the last few decades, the #adtech monopolies and #surveillancecapitalism is something that emerged from the positive feedback loops linking (amoral) developers, financiers, corrupt politicians, captive public
It's a very real pattern (because amorality, corruption, and ignorance are real). But its by no means the only pattern. There are other ways of closing the loop between the public, politicians, finance and developers. Finding them is the important quest
