In accordance with Elbakyan, communism and technology share a mission that is common which she relates to as “scientific communism.”
It’s an idea she arrived to borrow through the 20th century United states sociologist Robert Merton, whom founded the sociology of technology, research of technology as being a social training. (Merton coined terms that are influential as “self-fulfilling prophecy,” “role model,” and “unintended consequences.”) Many influential to Elbakyan had been Merton’s “norms,” which had been just just exactly what he regarded as the defining faculties of science: universalism, disinterestedness, arranged doubt, and, needless to say, communism. (Throughout our meeting, she’s nevertheless quick to rattle off quotes from Merton, declaring, “The communism for the clinical ethos is incompatible because of the concept of technology as ‘private home’ in a capitalistic economy.”)