McQuillan refers to "Tools for Conviviality", which discusses designing tools with limits so they enhance creativity and happiness but do not replace or subordinate human agency and community.
That strikes me as relevant to critiques of FOSS design ethos. What are genuine failings of FOSS design, and what are deliberate limitations intended to foster our agency?
"Tempting as it might be to look at the continent-spanning logistics of a corporation like Walmart and imagine it reordered for social benefit (Rozworski and Philips, 2019], or to wish for accelerated automation across healthcare and manufacturing that delivers luxury for society as a whole (Bastani, 2020), everything we've looked at in terms of the coupling of technical and social orders tells us this won't pan out as we may hope."
(1/2)
"Existing systems, and AI perhaps most of all, are not simply tools that can be turned to good ends or bad but technosocial infrastructures with an established momentum. A new apparatus will bear as much resemblance to existing AI as the eco-social innovations of the Lucas Plan did to the tanks and planes produced by Lucas Aerospace."
McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 7: Anti-Fascist AI
(2/2)
"The framing of a new apparatus accepts that the diversity, variety, and complexity of experience overflows representation and is therefore immune to representation."
McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 7: Anti-Fascist AI
I strongly recommend Resisting AI, particularly to any radical leftist working in the IT industry.