Conversation

Notices

1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 07-Oct-2018 23:49:23 EDT Nate Cull

   For one brief shining moment in the 1980s-1990s, it seemed like we the people would own and control our own computing infrastructure.

   That we wouldn't ever after need permission from opaque central authorities to process data, send messages, create devices, teach machines ideas. No corporations or governments could put themselves between us and the data bits in our machines. We would be free to think.

   That moment is rapidly slipping into a history that feels ridiculously over-optimistic.

   1. Blackcap (blackcap@todon.nl)'s status on Sunday, 07-Oct-2018 23:54:04 EDT Blackcap

      in reply to

      @natecull What was naïvely optimistic was the techno-futurists insisting that it would be automatic, because the technology dictated it. I knew that was BS, because I knew enough about the history of first radio then television broadcasting to know that both those technologies had similarly naïve optimism about them when they first appeared on the scene. Nothing's automatic, and capitalism is biased towards making profits, not liberating people.