Linked by David Adams on Thu 1st Oct 2009 01:39 UTC
As much as we like to stay away from letting real-world politics bleed over into our ongoing discussion of tech politics, I found an interesting essay over at The Economist's "Democracy in America" blog that draws a parallel between Apple's Mac/iPhone user-friendly ecosystem and the Microsoft Windows freer-but-more-chaotic ecosystem and how that lines up along the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum of real-world political division. They don't mention Open Source in this essay, but I'm sure it could make an interesting addition to the discussion. The essay's main point is that, in governance, attempts to make life more user-friendly for citizens usually ends up giving them less freedom of choice, and a certain segment of the political establishment will reliably oppose such moves. The idea that the tradeoff between choice and usability persists into the world of governance really set me to thinking. What kind of country would you rather live in? An Apple one, a Microsoft one, or an Open Source one?
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Member since:
2005-07-08
I mostly agree in that. But you should also remember that politics is related to almost everything, and the choices made in the world of IT and operating systems are often related to politics (in other words values, economics etc.) too. Software is developed and used by people, and people are political beings.
Even though you could say that software and operating systems - in themselves- are neutral, just tools, it would have quite big political consequences too if, say, more governments started favouring open source software and operating systems instead of depending on certain kind proprietary software like is the case nowadays. That is also why there is so much lobbying happening for this or that software philosophy in the politics.