Technology

Lorde's "master's tools" speech is routinely misread in tech discourse

Can confirm. As a person with a "tech" background I certainly misread it that way the first time I saw it quoted and went to learn more. It took some amount of actual thinking to understand what she was getting at and how it could be engaged with more fairly in contexts so far from that of the original.

Similarly, if you read the silicon valley artificial intelligence pseudo-research happening specifically from the computer science perspective right now it’s kind of hilarious how much of it is elementary takes on well established philosophical questions that people think they’re discovering for the first time. Look up neuralese if you want an example. Classic example of silicon valley being so excited it ‘invented’ the taxi.

Consider me enlightened! The recontextualization of the statement makes it make a lot more sense. As with many things, being swept into the tech sphere robbed it of meaning. I also think that the sentiment of "the tools used to build something are not the same tools which can effectively dismantle it" is true in many senses, not just in the context of social/politiical/institutional change.

I was confused by the section "How Taking the 'Master's Tools' Seriously Can Serve Enshittification". It transitions from an argument that

The early internet was structured around the assumptions of its architects: predominantly white, male, Western, educated, and abled

(which is true), then links this group directly to Facebook. While these descriptors apply to both the founders of the internet and the founders of the tech giants, facebook is at least 15 years younger than the foundation of the public internet, and these two groups are both mutually exclusive and ideologically at odds. The author then goes on to use the social harms of big tech to push back against Doctorow's first stage of enshittification, when the companies are "good".

I think this is a fundamental misreading of Doctorow. He has spent his career as a free software advocate, and claiming that the first stage of corporate capture of the internet is the ideal would be anathemic to his more general arguments. What he means by "good" here -- and he says this frequently in public discussions on enshittification -- is that the product does what it says on the box, with no BS. That people are tempted to use it because it allows people to access the internet without coming up against the sharp edges of the technology itself, and that is a reasonable compromise for many people at first, because it allows more people to access the internet.

The article argues that in order to fully represent the experience of all stakeholders, the internet "getting worse" is an incomplete view, and to understand the impacts outside the white, male, etc. perspective, we should use the tools of decolonialism, which would be true if Doctorows project was a thorough sociological analysis of the impacts of technology. But it isn't, it's a rallying cry. The goal of his book is to make a coherent narative of the change in experience for consumers of technology over the era of Big Tech, and it does that. This is far from the only case where it leaves out strong tie-ins to other philosophical or sociological concepts, but there is a strength in a focused argument as well.

It's unsurprising that Doctorow misappropriated Audre Lorde's words in their meme form, becuase that's what the book is -- an abbreviated, digestible approach to the topic. However, I'm glad that someone made those connections.