@glyph Did you quote post something?

[matt@toot.cafe]

@glyph I mean, the last chapter of part 2 (Hardware Hackers, about the Homebrew Computer Club, the beginning of Apple, etc.), is called "Secrets", and basically covers the shift from Homebrew to the new companies doing more or less business as usual. Same vibe with the ending of part 3 (Game Hackers, about Sierra, Broderbund, etc.), where, I think, Doug Carlson (Broderbund) is quoted saying something like, "I don't care if he gets rich, as long as I get richer."

[matt@toot.cafe]

@glyph Of course, Steven Levy couldn't have sold a book with a downer ending, so after covering Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" all alone at the MIT AI lab, he wraps the book up with an optimistic ending about many more future generations of hackers or somesuch.

[pepverbsnouns@mastodon.art]

@glyph The accurate description makes more sense when you consider that the first computers as we know them were designed for business use, and ended up in the home as a profit avenue and a means of conditioning people to get used to them

Also the modularity of the original PCs were due to the limits of manufacturing and not for user convenience. If they could have locked down computers back then the way they are now, they would have.

TL;DR: Democratization of computing is a bug, not a feature

[alcinnz@floss.social]

@glyph To me it looks like worker-power shone through when it took serious skill to overcome computing's shortcomings. Which was a poor strategy that couldn't last.

Since then it looks like capital doubled-down on financializing tech.

[steltenpower@social.edu.nl]

@glyph follow @spiralganglion yet?

[luis_in_brief@social.coop]

@glyph 🫂 ✊🏽

[luis_in_brief@social.coop]

@glyph also, we can draw hope from how far we came, from such flawed beginnings. We can do it again, and hopefully learn from some of the lessons too.

[astraluma@tacobelllabs.net]

@tedmielczarek @glyph I would have bet someone else would have won the home computer, then.

[the_blackwell_ninja@mastodon.online]

@glyph What did this was the DMCA enabling a predatory "felony contempt of business model" approach to technology from the likes of Meta. Computing technology is inherently democratizing because an individual can program it to do anything. Don't like the way something works? Fix it and release the fix to the masses. The problem is that now companies get to sue people and force them to stop fixing things.

[manmachine@mastodon.world]

@glyph Reminds me strongly of that famous Hunter S. Thompson quote:

“There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back”

[the_blackwell_ninja@mastodon.online]

@glyph The quintessential example is Zuckerberg writing a tool to migrate people off of MySpace, and onto Facebook, then turning around and using the DCMA to make it illegal for anybody to do the same to Facebook.

[gyrosgeier@hachyderm.io]

@glyph the ladder is being pulled up.

[blackcoat@kind.social]

@glyph There's an intersting book called "waht the dormouse said" about how the counter culture of the 60s became the internet people, and one of the things that I think it missed is how their parents participation in unions gave them the feeling of standing on equal footing with capital.

[jalefkowit@vmst.io]

@glyph Every revolution contains within it the seed of a new oppression. How that seed grows depends on whether it is weeded or watered

[puskar@macaw.social]

@glyph your second intuition is the correct one. We managed to come into computing during its toddlerhood. This is the same as early autos, radios, televisions, etc. You had to have specific domain knowledge to be able to make these devices do what you want. My kids only know computers as appliances, different from any other only in capability/flexibility.

[jwgoerlich@infosec.exchange]

@glyph I feel this in my bones. We’re letting something precious slip through our fingers.

[jwgoerlich@infosec.exchange]

@jalefkowit @glyph QoTD

[jameswidman@mastodon.social]

@astraluma @tedmielczarek @glyph alternate timeline where everyone bought amiga-compatible PCs

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@glyph so, I don't think your theory is even remotely historically accurate, and it is an incredibly depressing outlook. I wasn't going to comment because I don't know where to even begin with it and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter anyway if we agree on it, but you seem confused by people's reactions to it.

[owen@mastodon.transneptune.net]

@glyph I hold in my left hand the essay _The Californian Ideology_, about the birth of Silicon Valley.

I hold in my right hand Jordan Peele's and Bradley Whitford's note-perfect depiction of the successful white hippie in _Get Out_ in all his self-assured and liberated power to casually oppress.