alt Hacker NewsI hear that one a lot but pretty frequently it's applied to "social problems" which were caused by technology. It seems to imply some kind of technology/society boundary which doesn't actually exist.
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Mild disagree.
The saying "you can't solve social problems with technology" usually means - at least in the places I have heard / used it - "If your workforce fights a process - be it for the process being stupid, tools being slow, incentives do not align with policy, whatever - especially a control step, no amount of mandatory tech enforcement of that process step will yield better results." At best you get garbled data because someone hit the keyboard to fill in mandatory fields, sometimes, the process now works OUTSIDE of the system by informal methods because 'work still needs to be done', at worst, you get a mutiny.
You have to fix the people(s' problems) by actually talking to them and take the pain points away, you do not go to 'computer says no' territory first.
In my experience, no org problem is only social, and no tech problem is merely technical. Finding a sustainable solution in both fields is what distinguishes a staff engineer from a junior consultant.
There very much is that boundary. Jira by tech itself is a good product, but now try shoving it down people’s throats and see how that goes.
Or on a bigger scale look at FB/Social media and society. There definitely without a doubt is a boundary. They interact and overlap.