Beware liberal-flavoured conspiracy theories

Beware political analysis from the tech world, says Sam Kriss for Politico:

Silicon Valley doesn’t really approach politics as a sphere of competing social interests, a space in which people have the ability to make collective demands and collectively alter the conditions of their existences, but as a system—something with an input, an output and reams of complex programming in between. Whenever the tech world turns its attention to politics, there’s always the hint of this nerdish fascination for system: an inattention to what politics actually is or does, but a fetishization of efficiency, the latent notion that all these 18th-century structures really should just be replaced with something you can download on your phone.

It’s a useful reminder in light of some of the more hysterical pieces about the current US administration circulating on Medium right now. If the theory requires super-human competence and insight from the executive, it’s probably a poor theory.