Andrew Harmel-Law - Power Structures and their Impact on Software

About this talk

FlowCon France 2025

Power Structures and Their Impact on Software
Abstract: Code is literally knowledge made manifest, and therefore offers a history of knowledge; it is a record of how people understood a problem over an extended period of time.

But code is also power, and the ability to write/approve/deploy it can be used for ill or good, (intentionally or unintentionally). In so doing, code solidifies power structures; embedding that which is inevitably unequally distributed (unintentionally or intentionally) but embedded all the same.

Code is therefore also a geology (genealogy?) of power structures. Code forms the landscape where records of our old ways of (dis)organising, and ideas that won, continue to shape everything because this code is where teams live now.

We experience this “code-as-knowledge-and-power” every day; our freedom to act restricted or permitted.

In this talk I’ll dissect what is at play here. I’ll consider what is happening with “code-as-knowledge-and-power” and show how to work with it intentionally, instead of suffering/benefitting disproportionately at the hands of it.

Your code, and your life, will be better as a result.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Ursula K. Le Guin

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?

• Societal power structures make our code bad - code is structured knowledge and power


• To see where the power lies, pay attention to who has control - of punishment, information, and who is charismatic


• Fight uneven power distributions - by protecting everyone’s freedom to reorganize, move and disobey.

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