Software Is Politics

Politics is about distribution of power. Who has what power in our socieities? By which means they exert their power? To demonstrate the political role of software, one may talk about our times’ exuberant political influence demonstrations by tech giants such as Facebook, whose CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, dinners with world’s leaders to negotiate deals; someone else may point need the secretive, illegal and immoral ways of Uber to get rid of law enforcement on cities and countries where it is deemed illegal; I also hope someone points out the race-targeted real state ads on Facebook, again and again, after way too many courts rulling it illegal, together with other objectionable ad filters, such as age-targeted job postings.

But with that point stated, the answer that comes to mind is: what, then? How to hold those softwares accountable, those pieces of code that shape our lives, dictate our interactions and not-so-overtly collect our data? That’s what Richard Pope tries to answer on that article, among with its successor, ‘Software As Politics: How The Power Of Tech Can Be Held Accountable’.