@glyph Did you quote post something?

[vordring@bark.lgbt]

@glyph Same thing happened with post before. Anarchists were calling it a savior for humanity bridging gaps between countries and social movements, and then it was used to send death threats, organize illegal activity, and facilitate scams... In other words, everything was back to normal.

[coppercrush@beige.party]

Very nicely put - you are articulating something that most of the 'tech critics' on here are missing.

The idea that computer-based technological progress moves society forward was always an illusion. It cannot be our salvation and it is dangerous to our survival to continue thinking this way.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking tech is fundamentally a tool of progress, a tool of democracy, a tool of liberation, a tool of societal wellness and growth. This was projection, and untrue: it is simply a tool of whatever forces govern us as humans.

Unless we liberate ourselves from an underlying vision of status chasing and material exploitation, we will never learn how appropriately use the tools at hand.

It's the invention of firearms all over again, a symptom of a greater unadressed underlying sickness of human civilizational culture that must be treated at the source.

@glyph

[mike805@noc.social]

@tedmielczarek @glyph IBM tried to take back the PC market with the PS2. It was designed by lawyers to be copy-proof, in a proto-DMCA way.

The market just stayed with the old design and continued to improve it.

The lesson of the PC is that antitrust enforcement can freeze a monopoly long enough for progress to take place.

We wouldn't have a public Internet if you still had to lease a 1200 bps Dataphone from the Bell System to get online. Antitrust changed that.

[mike805@noc.social]

@aeva @glyph Don't forget war. Capitalism always has war as plan C.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@mike805 @glyph right, forgot about state sanctioned outright theft and violence. a rather glaring omission in retrospect

[smartmanapps@dotnet.social]

@glyph @phocks
"It's not like the "computer industry" did this" - no, e-mail did (and there was usenet as well, though e-mail was the killer app that got everyone online initially), and wasn't invented by any of them (e-mail and usenet both invented by University people), and ever since then the industry has been trying to regain their power, largely successfully (though we still have bastions like the Fediverse).

[garrwolfdog@yiff.life]

@vordring @glyph Same with the printing press. It was heralded as an amazing new way to spread knowledge. buuuut almost instantly became a way for authoritarianism to extend it reach.

[garrwolfdog@yiff.life]

@glyph I think, for us at least, the feeling is more that it 'COULD' have been great. and for a brief moment there, it was.

[etsyy@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone @glyph@mastodon.social while this is a beautiful sentiment, it of course begs the question, why is any of it necessary to begin with? why do we consistently recognize pain and suffering and then collectively act against our own best interests?

[mux@swingset.social]

@glyph
It was a TAZ. Temporary Autonomous Zones happen naturally in spaces where there is no clear social hierarchy for a long enough period, like the Wild West, or the Occupy encampments.

They cannot last, as power abhors a vacuum, but while they do, every one that took part is forever changed by that glimpse of freedom and will yearn for the rest of their life, to feel it just one more time.

[skry@mastodon.social]

@rrwo
In the long continuum between Cause and Qanon are Control, Class, Collusion, and Kleptocracy. The internet also lets us learn historical nuance and follow the money when the corporate captured media won't investigate.

@glyph

[vordring@bark.lgbt]

@garrwolfdog @glyph True, but the difference is in how far we take the argument of "the man with technology is like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine". The printing press is a Kaczynski style example, while the post is a modern left example (notably, used by Graeber in his internet critique).

[isaackuo@spacey.space]

@glyph Well, one of those "few promising ideas" is Free Software, and the continued existence and thriving of the Debian project is a humongous thing we don't need to re-run from scratch.

Back in the 1980s, Free Software was partly a theoretical - there wasn't a fully functional Free OS yet. We have that now, and much more. Debian's software repositories are easily the biggest and most comprehensive software eco-system bar none. Commercial software can't even come close.

This is something that

[isaackuo@spacey.space]

@glyph the big commercial computing corporations are trying to undo. They're trying to force us into closed gardens of iOS and Android, and Microsoft has also been trying to figure out how to force everyone into some sort of closed garden.

But so far, these efforts have not yet succeeded.

So, we've got a much better starting point than 1978.

[hairylarry@gamerplus.org]

@glyph @aeva

Similarly the music industry will never go back to a time when a record contract was the only path to success. That doesn't mean that the record industry no longer exists. It just means that the internet, email, etc. give musicians options.

#computing #internet #music #promotion

[baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone]

@etsyy @glyph I guess I'm not sure that we do "collectively act against our own best interests?" I think people reliably act in their own best interests but that we don't all agree on what interests we should prioritize for ourselves or our community. I think that privacy is important and others may think that safety and convenience are more important.

[baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone]

@etsyy @glyph Maybe those folks have not seen the studies about the minimal impact that increased surveillance has on safety or maybe their experience is that safety in in such short supply that they will try anything.

[baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone]

@etsyy @glyph Having a listening device in my house that connects to one company and knows about all my shopping and health needs sounds Orwellian to me, but if I were physically disabled and there was not a "no surveillance option" then I can't say I would not choose convenience. People can only choose better options when there are better options for them to choose.

[scooter@labyrinth.zone]

@etsyy @baconandcoconut @glyph Trying to figure out human nature from analyzing the arc of computer development, even in a social context, would be extremely difficult. While there are some sociological and philosophical constructs to explain it, suffice it to say that this is something human beings just do.

[glyph@mastodon.social]

@scooter @baconandcoconut @etsyy when thinking of indifference to suffering in big abstract sociological terms I am often reminded of the discordian sermon on ethics and love:

mal-2: Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices …

eris: WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

mal-2: But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it.

eris: OH. WELL, THEN STOP.