I agree that some choices cannot be avoided, but others can and should be avoided.
In my opinion, we should avoid linking the use of IT infrastructures to political issues such as systems of government, wars, climate change, gender identity, religion or anything else that is unrelated to the technical aspects of that infrastructure.
Open source licences themselves are a good example of how I think it should be done. They do not impose any unnecessary political restrictions. They only impose specific rules related to source code. I think that's a good idea and we should apply this idea to other IT infrastructures as well.
What makes IT infrastructures special compared to anything else that we should avoid political matters?
For me they are critical and omnipresent. So crucial, in fact, that they are somewhat at the center of political matters nowadays. They are probably a core part of many policies.
And I believe the way they are done cannot avoid politics.
Trying hard to project into myself into your perspective, I'm trying to compare them to roads, which are infrastructure too. You could say they should be neutral and let anybody use them without discrimination...
... but they are not neutral. The way they are built consume more or less energy, have various environmental implications, they more or less encourage usage of cars or trains or planes depending on how the network is organized, how they are maintained, which facilities are nearby roads… And many roads are not very usable without cars so they actually discriminate.
I believe the same kind of things apply to IT infrastructure. Most choices will have political implications and therefore you'd actually be careful when designing them.
Now, regardless of whether IT infrastructure can be kept neutral (which I don't think is possible), I actually think that we should not and that we'd better work hard to leverage, and design them the best we can to limit our environmental footprint (for instance).
I already conceded that it is not possible to avoid all politics. There are political decisions to be made that are directly related to the infrastructures themselves, their functioning, their economics, their accessibility, the power structures they enable, etc. I did not mean to exclude these political aspects.
What I meant very specifically is that access to IT infrastructures in the widest sense of the word (including source code) should not be restricted based on political opinions or fault lines.
Going further, I would not even restrict access to criminals as long as the criminality is not related to the functioning of the infrastructure itself. I believe that such restrictions would threaten the infrastructures themselves, make them worse for everybody or at least cause unacceptable levels of collateral damage.
I agree that absolute neutrality doesn't exist. But throwing out the whole concept of neutrality just because neutrality has its limits would be a bad idea. E.g., network neutrality has a very specific meaning. It doesn't mean that networks can be neutral in absolutely every way.
In my opinion, we should avoid linking the use of IT infrastructures to political issues such as systems of government, wars, climate change, gender identity, religion or anything else that is unrelated to the technical aspects of that infrastructure.
Open source licences themselves are a good example of how I think it should be done. They do not impose any unnecessary political restrictions. They only impose specific rules related to source code. I think that's a good idea and we should apply this idea to other IT infrastructures as well.