It should be obvious that we can have a conversation about, say, the Android low memory killer's process ordering strategy without having to talk about the social implications of website cookie tracking or whatever.

Yes, mobile technology as a whole is connected to privacy. That doesn't mean that any particular detail of that technology is relevant to any particular political cause, and it doesn't give people the right to inject social issues into discussions into technical matters. You can't be intellectually honest, keep a straight face, and claim that malloc chunking is "deeply intertwined" with some pet political cause.

One reason the West has gone mad the past few years is this bizarre emphasis on the old, bad "the personal is the political" idea. No, it isn't.