Tools define a relationship with the entity being tooled, so you can learn a lot about the goals and values of the transactions by looking at the kinds of relationships that are/aren't implied.
You can't feed people with an AR-15.
The metaphors that define computing are all about abstraction, automation without human input, predictability, and control.
Abstraction tends to lossy and context-insensitive, which is why an algorithm will say "no" to a loan request based on a credit score that ignores personal context, where a human loan manager who knows the people involved might say yes - for good and valid reasons.
Computing seems to be one of the most successful products of modernism, which values speedy predictable repetition, lack of decoration, and anonymised mechanisation.
It's possible to imagine computing in other value systems. But it's revealingly hard to do without losing the essence.
All of which is a complicated way of agreeing - computing is not neutral, and very probably can't be.
It's the first automated value evangelising system in history. And that's not a comfortable thought.
You can't feed people with an AR-15.
The metaphors that define computing are all about abstraction, automation without human input, predictability, and control.
Abstraction tends to lossy and context-insensitive, which is why an algorithm will say "no" to a loan request based on a credit score that ignores personal context, where a human loan manager who knows the people involved might say yes - for good and valid reasons.
Computing seems to be one of the most successful products of modernism, which values speedy predictable repetition, lack of decoration, and anonymised mechanisation.
It's possible to imagine computing in other value systems. But it's revealingly hard to do without losing the essence.
All of which is a complicated way of agreeing - computing is not neutral, and very probably can't be.
It's the first automated value evangelising system in history. And that's not a comfortable thought.