71–80 of 225 posts
Tech has had many conscientious objectors, I've watched them come and go over the decades. Most of them drive trucks now. A few lucky ones became artists or writers, but mostly a lot of bad outcomes. One of these failed truck drivers even makes deliveries to the house of the person who forced him out sometimes, a fact which he loves laughing about.
I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…
We have the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) but it's not promoted or advertised near enough in my opinion to people in the field.
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> Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways. This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted…
Are you claiming the U.S. founding fathers had an adversarial role in establishing democracy?
If by "democracy" we mean "there is no privileged class, and all people born in the land can vote if they are of age and have not had their privileges removed by due process of law," or we mean "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" (the Declaration of Independence), or we mean "Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.... The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage" (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), then yes, I think the people responsible for the Constitution were quite adversarial to that goal.
The United Kingdom, in freedom from whom the US founding fathers supposedly established democracy, banned slavery over half a century before the US did and slowly but steadily allowed more people to vote for Parliament during the 1800s. At the time the US Constitution was established, only 6% of the US population could vote, according to https://web.archive.org/web/20160706144856/http://www.archiv... .
I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…
Further down in this thread the discussion has broadened to worker rights in tech-adjacent jobs (eg. amazon warehouses). It would be great if we could have one big union that fights for the rights of all workers, and if you think so too you should look into joining the IWW.
Yes, our society does need to adopt morality and ethics as guiding principles in our work, and organizing your workplace is not some orthogonal venture but is actually part of that goal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways. This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted…
It's easy to criticize someone when you're not the doing the work. The world was a lot more racist a few centuries ago, so considering what they had to work with, the founding fathers did well. The alternative is that there still would have been civil war, and slavery could have continued to this day.
And it is just as easy to praise someone when you're not the one they're hurting.
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> The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that... Moreover, "coding" is a cross-cutting concern in that a lot of people who aren't formally…
Why large Unions represent a diverse set of members take Prospect (UK) which represents people in a very diverse set of industry's.
Wikipedia says it’s a trade union for “scientists, managers, and engineers” with 140k members across quite a few industries.
No mention of what they actually do though.
It's quite amazing the difference 10 years makes!
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> The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that... Moreover, "coding" is a cross-cutting concern in that a lot of people who aren't formally…
Why large Unions represent a diverse set of members take Prospect (UK) which represents people in a very diverse set of industry's.
The same thing applies to coding.
I've always ended up with, and still reach the conclusion that there are only two tenable options which will work against a corrupt and unethical system. 1. Infiltrate, subvert, and implode the system from within (that's meant to be as Tzu-esque as it sounds). 2. Using parallel propaganda to get the public to realize that they have the ability to disable the system if they can collectively wield a moral, objective, a…
I considered it once again myself last year, when I talked with a big-name company, and my version that time was "I can do good work on good stuff, promote that over the not-as-good stuff, and generally be a positive citizen of the company".
Of course, I was also thinking I could really use the big-corp money. But when they insisted that I'd have to do the new-grad hazing rituals, I decided I was kidding myself that I was being considered for any position where I'd have any input into goodness, and they were really only considering me as a junior frat pledge.
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>> don't want to be advertised too Most people probably don't mind seeing advertisements. It's just completely ridiculous that Google or FB think they need to track individuals in order to provide targeted advertising. If someone searches for 'football', then just show a fucking ad that is relevant to 'football' along with the search results.
What makes companies like Google valuable is that they can tell whether the user searching "football" should be shown an ad for "American football" or soccer. For that, you need tracking.