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Ask HN: Should software developers be activists?

2 points by rhythnic ↗ HN
Our society has many problems. People want change, and protests occur regularly (Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wallstreet), but very little change happens as a result. We've just experienced the worst financial crash since The Great Depression. There are world-wide protests demanding racial equality. In the U.S., we are on the verge of a wave of evictions, and people are disenfranchised with the political system. Whether it fails to create meaningful change or whether it's even intended to is not irrelevant but effectively the same.

What does all this mean for software developers? We program and oil the industrial complex, the system that is jeopardizing our very survival. Software engineers have brought tremendous efficiency gains resulting in profit gains that as we know are not fairly distributed, and we continue to automate and increase unemployment while our society, in the U.S., lacks essentials like food security and good public housing. That being said, we are also in a unique position at this point in history. The world and our economy have become dependent on software. Should software developers use the economy's dependence on software as an opportunity to demand socioeconomic change? Recently I've seen some open source projects using their landing page to bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement. I think that's great, but can we do more? Could an association of developers help to create change, and what might that look like?

5 comments

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jmnicolas
No. I don't mix personal beliefs and work and I hate it when others do.

And in my opinion you're not going to achieve anything (positive that is) with software. In fact, to change things people would need to use LESS software to become less dependent on those big corporations that pretend that they care.

You want to be revolutionary? Ditch your smartphone and live a simpler life. You can only change yourself and maybe others by the example you set.

fsflover
You don't have to use smartphones created by the large corporations. Consider GNU/Linux phones.
rhythnic
I agree that the world needs to be less focused on software, and a simpler life would be nice. I also agree that people should not try to change others and focus on themselves, but the issue is not about changing others. It's about changing the system.

Software can achieve many positive things, including the organization of communities and their management, automation and efficiency gains, and the benefits of automation and efficiency gains should be shared by all.

A simple life without a cell phone might make for more personal happiness, but it's not going to save me from environmental destabilization, and it's not going to change any of the underlying factors of the system that affect which type of life I can have, no matter how simple I try to make it.

The issues we face are best solved by community action and not individualism.

fsflover
Everyone should actively participate in the social life and politics. Without it, the government becomes more and more corrupt, lacking checks and balances.

See also: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banalit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil

rhythnic
Excellent article and entirely relevant. "One interpretation of this holds that it was not an observation about what a regular guy Adolf Eichmann seemed to be, but rather a statement about what happens when people play their “proper” roles within a system, following prescribed conduct with respect to that system, while remaining blind to the moral consequences of what the system was doing — or at least compartmentalizing and ignoring those consequences."