@grmpyprogrammer I believe that you are absolutely right, but I also think that there is a very important reason why it was that way, and that reason is that you can't really do the kind of technical work that programmers do while also thinking politically at the same time. This is why we always built organizations to shield technicians, researchers, artists, craftsmen, etc. from politics – to let them do the kind of work that requires curiosity, and hope, and naivete.

@deshipu Artists? If you’re shielding yourself from politics then you ain’t doing art, you’re doing decoration.

@tripleman On the other hand, if you are not shielded from politics you are not doing art, you are doing propaganda.

@deshipu bullshit.

@tripleman Imagine you are a painter in the Soviet Russia. If you have no shielding from politics – no fame that would make you harder to attack, no friends that could protect you, no sponsors that could shelter you – then you have to paint approved soc-realism pieces, "decoration" as you say, because as soon as you try anything even remotely critical of your society, you are going to a gulag, and your work gets censored.

@deshipu Stalin has been dead for a long, long time and Pussy Riot is still around.

@tripleman because they are shielded