[hlandau]

Author here.

This misses the point that computers are a technology. Like any technology, the choice to adopt a technology is always made by a human actor with some knowledge of the relevant tradeoffs. Ergo, wilful adoption of a technology which (necessarily) possesses the attributes I describe can be taken as tacit consent to those attributes and the collateral damage they cause. There is a human actor hiding behind every life ruined by "computer says no".

Saying that no technology is inherently oppressive is strange to me. Are prisons not by design an intentionally oppressive technology?

The human perception of agency in inanimate objects is curiously variable. To my understanding, this is a factor in why some people are more religious and some people are less so. Since my article is intrinsically written from the capacity to perceive agency as present in an inanimate object, it's perhaps less compelling to people who aren't wired this way, is my guess. This is not a criticism of anyone, just an observation of an interesting human neurological variability. Other constructions of the same argument are of course possible.

In any case, the point here is that a human actor decides to adopt computers as a technology; and that that act generally replaces a human interaction which was previously social, human-to-human, and therefore on some level adaptive and modulated by empathy, whereas a human-computer interaction is inherently uncaring. The adoption of computer technology in society has led to a generalised trend of replacing human-human (social) interactions with human-computer or human-computer-human interactions, which generally remove all opportunities for adaptation or empathic variation.

This leads to my view that computers as a technology in society are inherently oppressive.

Though I suppose one possible qualification would be that this possibly is only the case when applied as a technology by a different party to the party which will be subject to it. A computer in someone's home by their free choice, which is purely controlled by them (which is therefore not any modern computer, I should note) seems like an exception.

[slowmovintarget]

My position is that the technology does not possess the attributes you claim it does.

Prisons are not a technology. Prisons are buildings that use various technologies, including optics, metallurgy, concrete, electronics... etc. But prisons are an application.

Adoption of computers, and the decision to use them to oppress or to free, is entirely within in the purview of the adopter. That is, the only people to blame are the ones who set the technology to a specific purpose, those who apply it.

Your essay confuses application with existence, and I don't think that make sense. A car exists. It can be used to drive kids to school, or it can be used to mow down pedestrians. There is nothing inherent in the technology with relation to intent. I think the same is true of computers.

Potential application is not the same as intent.

[hlandau]

Prisons are a technology as I define it, as is writing, agriculture, etc.