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Much of the time engineers resist the idea that their work has moral or political consequences at all. Many see themselves as interested in efficiency and design, in building cool stuff rather than messy ideological disputes and inchoate values.

At times, this attitude can verge on a “Guns don’t kill people, people do” mentality — a wilful blindness to how their design decisions affect the daily lives of millions.

[…] when the social repercussions of their work are troubling, the architects of the online world often fall back on the manifest-destiny rhetoric of technodeterminism.

[…]

Technodeterminism is alluring and convenient for newly powerful entrepreneurs because it absolves them of responsibility for what they do. Like priests at the altar, they’re mere vessels of a much larger force that it would be futile to resist. They need not concern themselves with the effects of the systems they’ve created.

- Eli Pariser FTW

(Source: wired.co.uk)