There was a golden age when computers were something you owned, not like before when they were big machines your employer or university would give out access to, nor like after when they went to the cloud, you bought what was essentially a thin client and every software became a service.
At least in the olden days the computers weren’t forced into every single damn part of society!
Now in order to talk with most of your friends and family, you have to sell your soul to every one of the thousand ToS’s. It’s impossible to meaningfully use your personal device you bought with your own money without the internet, as every app and their mom needs to call home for some reason. For some reason, it is morally acceptable for a company to prevent you from being able to have someone you pay to replace parts of your device with third-party components you bought with your own money!
Now, of course, you can simply install some Libre operating system and use Lemmy, or Mastodon or whatever. But computers are so embedded into society that it is simply impossible to go without these services unless you want to get yourself isolated (and potentially in trouble with the authorities).
Besides, from prior experience, most people are unwilling to use technologies unless it is physically placed in front of them, whether through social influences, advertising or word of mouth, which generally corporate services do better than Libre alternatives.
It used to be that computers and programs were made for the end user. Now they are simply tools for ad and data-collection companies to extract every byte of personal data and force every second of advertising on others.
I’ve been seriously considering to remove computers from most aspects of my life, but as paper slowly disappears from our lives, this becomes harder and harder. Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses. No one uses fax or writes mail or watches live TV anymore.
The only other alternative is to take back computers and make them personal again.
What are you blathering about, it’s never been cheaper or easier to have a personal computer than now, however you define it. You can go full paranoid from coreboot up or you can just get a steam deck and dock and have a nice arch in desktop mode. You can meaningfully use it with internet, Firefox with ublock origin, Signal to talk to your family without selling your soul or whatever. Is this written by a chatbot?
You are not wrong but OP also is lamenting that normies won’t do it due to how social order is structured. Not much to do about it besides educating people around you.
You aint convincing boomers that privacy is a right that you have to protect. But younger folks are one shiti event from being believers and we got a lot of shit floating down our way.
Critical mass should hit in like a generation or two!
But younger folks are one shiti event from being believers and we got a lot of shit floating down our way.
They stubbornly ignore the technical component and are even irritated for you daring to suppose that there’s anything important in preventing that shit other than their social and political activity.
They refuse to understand that most of said activity on compromised bot-infested platforms (all the mainstream) is bent in the direction power wants.
The threats are not directly visible, they are abstract, theoretical, hard to feel and touch. While you are near, a real person saying to them that something you know better than them is more important than they think, and something they know better than you is less important than they think.
That tends to create resistance.
Counter-point: why would want to own and maintain something like a computer? I want a simple device that take no thought and can be replaced with zero effort.
Agreed, we’re living in the a computer/phone is an appliance age. This is also why there is a movement that doesn’t like electric vehicles. They’re just too accessible and they don’t like that. Same mentality here. The only main difference is of course there is librehardware out there AND software. Just about the entirety of Linux ecosystem is this. If one wants to tinker and make them personal all one has to do is build a home lab. Plenty of maintenance on one of those and it’s probably not affecting one’s day to day life.
Are we maintaining computers?
I haven’t had to do anything beyond installing the OS after a hardware update or installing software for over a decade. Yeah, I’m lazy and using Windows, but my last hardware was used for about 7 years without needing any troubleshootijg and I upgraded a few years ago to keep up with modern games.
I guess I clean the filter sometimes.
Ahh, a game of devil’s advocate. There’s no reason why a Libre product with sane defaults can’t do this either.
I’m not sure it’s devil’s advocate: I work with computers for 40 hours a week. There’s no way that I want to put any effort into a computer in my personal time
I grew up with computers since the ‘70s. I know this golden age well - and the golden age of the internet before it was monetized, tracked, ad-ified, walled off, etc.
We’re never going to get the old days back.
There’s always some business that’s going to insert itself between what you want and you and try to extract profit from it. Doesn’t matter if it’s tracking you or subscription fees.
I hate being taken advantage of like that, but unfortunately if you want to play with some of their toys you have to pay.
Just do it judiciously and take control where you can.
I build my own PCs. No pre-loaded crap. I download driver-only software when needed, not bloated corporate-ware like what HP or canon does to pester you about ordering ink. I have several Linux boxes doing free things for me like running a 3D printer, running a CUPS print server, running openHABian, a Jellyfin server, and the best of all - Pi-hole (block ads, block devices from phoning home). I run Firefox with all the ad blockers and anti-trackers. Facebook containers and YouTube ad blockers.
But I run windows 10. Why? Because it was free and it works. Take advantage of the system that takes advantage of you. I also run it dual boot with Manjaro, for all those tasks windows might make difficult.
My LAN has a separate network for all IOT and similar devices so they can’t see the rest of my network, and most are blocked from phoning home as needed. They don’t get to sell that data.
I take advantage of all free good software; Gimp, LibreOffice, OBS, VLC, 7zip…
Some things we’ll never get back, like ownership of top-tier games that have to phone home.
Anyway… like I said, there’s no way to wind the clock back. However, with effort, you can control what you can and at least not give them what they’re trying to extract from you. Be in charge of what you let them have. It’s really all we’ve got.
That’s a wrong speech to deliver to a cute girl asking how to make things better.
You’ve started with philosophy and economics and olden days.
If we want to explain today’s tech and possible directions of fixing it to “normal” people, we need to start with what they need to do that they do with smartphones.
That’s what businesses do too - they take something hard and suboptimal, make the road shorter and take their toll. Sometimes stealing part of what you are carrying on that road, or replacing it with their unwanted shit, or just stuffing their unwanted shit into your pockets.
So what we should think about is - what to replace their finger-poking box with, so that it’d be better fit for how they use it.
I’ve written my luddite idea in another comment. Split it into a few dedicated devices, much simpler in their essence. Since smartphones are used today mostly not as universal machines, and this difference can be optimized.
That’s only IMHO.
You’ve reiterated pretty much what I said, but directly contradicted some of the most obvious points.
Not sure what a “cute girl” has to do with anything, I gave a pragmatic explanation. Do you treat cute girls like they can’t handle realistic information?
Your idea is to reduce functionality of popular devices. That’s not going to work. Like I said, if you want to play in these businesses’ little proprietary gardens you’re going to have to play by their rules. If you want to be a Luddite, great, but for the vast majority of people such limited devices will never be adopted and any business producing them will either be niche expensive or fail.
Just keep in mind that installing an app via the respective app stores (just install, not custom settings) is often the limit of what people can, and are willing to do.
People just simply don’t have the time, willpower and/or knowledge to get a controlled LAN working. It’s similar to how you don’t expect everyone being able to fly a helicopter, or build a car from scratch.
We’re never going to get the old days back.
Nothing is stopping you from using a computer as a standalone machine not connected to the internet. Then you have a machine just like the ones in the 1970’s and 1980’s except for having much more memory/processor/diskspace etc. I would say you have a better OS also, except that Linux is basically the same OS as my SCO Xenix 386 I had in the 1980’s.
I don’t think I follow. Your going to have to give me examples of what you specifically don’t like.
Don’t like spyware in your OS? Install a FOSS OS. Unfortunately, firmware is mostly still binary blobs (I’m looking at Framework to do something about this but they’re taking a heck of a long time).
You don’t call your loved ones? I’ve yet to hear of companies putting ads inside phone calls. If you’re using a chat app that spies on you but your family doesn’t give a duck about it, use a matrix back-end and self-host it.
Now, of course, you can simply install some Libre operating system and use Lemmy, or Mastodon or whatever. But computers are so embedded into society that it is simply impossible to go without these services unless you want to get yourself isolated (and potentially in trouble with the authorities).
Lol what?
“If you don’t use Mastodon or Lemmy you might get in trouble with the law!”
