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How can we return to techno-optimism?
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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Decomodify software. Refuse to respect copyright laws for software, or mandate that all software must be GPL or an equivalent restrictive license.
Make it so that all government software must be GPL, that would remove an enormous install base from corporate entities. Certain EU countries are already doing this.
If you are a public institution of any kind, you should not be using corporate, proprietary software, no exceptions.
Closed source software and hardware is largely what allowed massive corpos to take over the software and hardware scene, and it's what creates the incentive for silicon valley tech bros to create new technology solely in the hopes of being acquired for hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars by some massive megacorp.
Corpos and private equity scumbags wouldn't be interested in acquiring these companies if they knew all the code and technology was under a GPL-like license, and anybody could take that tech, modify it, redistribute it, fork it, rebrand it, etc.
Schools included.
Many students today don't touch a personal computer a lot outside of school and then workplace.
My conspiracy theory:
I suspect that's the desired effect of "smartphones", and also the reason "smartphones" without keyboards are such an industry consensus. Not them being cheaper. Not them looking nicer. First, keyboards can be very sexy (think ZX Spectrum, or Blackberry for PDAs), second, however they look, touchscreen UIs are PITA, third, they are not that more expensive.
The strategy thus is that entertainment personal computing should be pressed out to devices hardly usable for work. So that "normal" people would gain their experience with that, and thus not gain the experience accompanying normal personal computing. As in - tinkering, customization, creation.
Because I remember how in my childhood any kid with a PC at home would do some tinkering and exploration. Today's kids scroll, and scroll, and scroll.
Mind-boggling actually, my sister (now kinda helpless with computers) was making websites and RPGs with RPGMaker2000, my younger cousin who is a designer was - I actually don't remember what she was doing, but something connected to editing amateur films they were making with my older cousin, who's a software engineer now.
Getting back to various pressures, this reduces the space for personal computing free from corporate and governmental policies. And this also reduces the unwanted effects from more creative entertainment - people who do something as a hobby are a direct competition to corporate gaslighting. The contrast is like between an 18yo girl on a rock festival and a Soviet propaganda poster. The latter never wins. And such a situation sadly negatively affects the chances of people getting the kinds of hobbies corps wouldn't want them to have.