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omegaphilosophia · 9 months

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Exploring the Philosophical Landscape of Technology: Theories and Perspectives

The philosophy of technology is a rich and evolving field that explores the nature, impact, and ethical dimensions of technology. Here are some key theories and approaches within this field:

Technological Determinism: This theory suggests that technology shapes society and human behavior more than individuals or society shape technology. It proposes that technological developments have a predetermined, often inevitable, impact on social, cultural, and economic structures.

Social Construction of Technology (SCOT): SCOT theory argues that technologies are not inherently good or bad but are socially constructed. It focuses on the process by which technologies are developed, adopted, and adapted based on the values and interests of different social groups.

Postphenomenology: Drawing from phenomenology, this approach explores how technology mediates our interactions with the world. It examines the ways in which technology influences our perception, embodiment, and experiences.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT): ANT considers both human and non-human actors (like technology) as equal participants in shaping social networks and processes. It emphasizes the role of technology in mediating human interactions and agency.

Ethics of Technology: This area of philosophy explores the ethical dimensions of technological development and use. It delves into topics such as privacy, surveillance, artificial intelligence ethics, and the moral responsibilities of technologists.

Philosophy of Information: This branch investigates the fundamental nature of information and its role in technology. It examines concepts like data, knowledge, and information ethics in the digital age.

Critical Theory of Technology: Rooted in critical theory, this approach critiques the social and political implications of technology. It seeks to uncover power structures and inequalities embedded in technological systems.

Feminist Philosophy of Technology: This perspective focuses on the intersection of gender and technology. It examines how technology can reinforce or challenge gender norms and inequalities.

Environmental Philosophy of Technology: This theory explores the environmental impact of technology, including topics like sustainability, resource depletion, and the ethics of technological solutions to environmental challenges.

Existentialist Philosophy of Technology: Drawing from existentialism, this approach considers the impact of technology on human existence and individuality. It explores questions of alienation, authenticity, and freedom in a technological world.

Human Enhancement Ethics: With the advancement of biotechnology, this theory addresses the ethical dilemmas surrounding human enhancement technologies, including genetic engineering and cognitive enhancement.

Pragmatism and Technology: Pragmatist philosophy examines how technology influences our practical, everyday experiences and shapes our interactions with the world.

These theories and approaches within the philosophy of technology provide valuable insights into how technology influences and is influenced by society, as well as the ethical considerations that arise in our increasingly technologically driven world.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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How lock-in hurts design

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a host of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists love the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick – especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on – a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance – 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then Apple started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences – they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are pure moral hazard – for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths – and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions – is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want relevant ads" is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can never anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers – people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is a poor substitute asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

Image: Belem (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desire_path_%2819811581366%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #desire paths #design #drm #everything not mandatory is prohibited #apps #ip #innovation #user innovation #technological self-determination #john deere #twitter #felony contempt of business model

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emlp2020 · 1 year

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Technological Determinism according to ChatGPT

Technological determinism is a theory that posits that technology is the primary driving force behind social and cultural change. According to this theory, technology shapes and influences society, rather than the other way around.

However, technological determinism has been criticized for several reasons, including:

1. Overgeneralization: Technological determinism oversimplifies the complex interplay between technology and society. While technology does play a role in shaping and changing society, it is not the only factor. Other factors, such as politics, culture, and economics, also play a significant role in shaping the direction and impact of technological change.

2. Ignores Context: Technological determinism often ignores the context in which technology is developed, used, and adopted. The impact of technology can vary greatly depending on the social, cultural, and historical context in which it is used.

3. Technological Neutrality: Technological determinism assumes that technology is neutral and value-free, but in reality, technology is shaped by human values, biases, and interests. The development and deployment of technology is influenced by political, economic, and cultural factors, and these factors can also influence the impact of technology on society.

Empirical Evidence:

- The example of the internet: The internet is often cited as an example of the limitations of technological determinism. While the internet has certainly changed the way people communicate and access information, it has not had a uniform impact on society. The impact of the internet varies greatly depending on the social, cultural, and economic context in which it is used.

- The Green Revolution: The Green Revolution in agriculture, which introduced new technologies and practices to increase crop yields, is another example of the limitations of technological determinism. While the Green Revolution did increase crop yields, it also had unintended consequences, such as increased pesticide use and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few large corporations.

These are just a few examples of the limitations of technological determinism. While technology does play a role in shaping and changing society, it is not the only factor, and its impact can vary greatly depending on the context in which it is used.

Regenerate response

Prompt: What are some of the fundamental flaws of technological determinism, and please provide empirical evidence.

#ChatGPT #leading questions #technological determinism #no argument

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factoringprimes-blog · 1 year

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Shannon Vallor:

“Humanity’s greatest challenge today is the continued rise of a technocratic regime that compulsively seeks to optimise every possible human operation without knowing how to ask what is optimal, or even why optimising is good. “

#AI art #artificial intelligence #ethics #technological ethics #the good life #technological determinism

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widowlurker · 8 months

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Bucky Barnes is a nerd pass it on

#this man has like 9 scenes of happiness total #and most of them is just him being amazed by technology #“I read the hobbit in 1937 when it first came out”#Bro weren’t you poor ???#HOW #hes a very determined nerd that’s how #and maybe autistic but you didn’t hear that from me #bucky barnes

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dragonpropaganda · 2 years

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Not what i was thinking i was gonna post on halloween, but this software is so fucked up it’s scary. Gotta say, the way rain world levels work is utterly fascinating to me. Like, technically and visually. It’s important to note rain world is a 2.5d game here. Let’s get an image example: GW_A24 (which stands for garbage wastes single screen room 24 in room file shorthand)

Note the 3-dimensionality of the space, as well as survivor’s shadow on the curved stone pillar behind it. This is rendered as 2.5d in the gamespace. Now let��s look at the room render in the files:

A... flat .png image? Yes. Rain world renders this 2.5d world from a red depthmap. The overbearing redness may stick out, far from the browns and toxic greens of the room in-game. This is because the game applies palettes

In the bottom left corner, see the palette menu, note the fade palette? yes, rooms get not one but two palettes to play with, which gives much more colour depth and variance in a region.

toning down the toxic fade palette, we get nothing but the sun-bleached grey palette 9, and turning it up...

Yeowch! The toxic hues in full force. Obviously this palette, palette 11 couldn’t be used like this, but with palette 9 as a moderator, it manages to show the intense pollution of the garbage wastes.

Now, as for the origin of the png image, it is created in the rain world level editor. To someone who has not used the level editor, this may seem simple. To someone who has, the mere mention may bring a tear to their eye.

the editor is split into quite a few editors, but here is the most relevant one for this, the tile editor.

One look at this and you might think “hey, those assets look like they were drawn in MS paint, where are my 2.5d objects? And where are the objects lying on the floor?” To answer this, i must elaborate. The tile editor shows previews of the tiles. the actual models, or to resort to technical vocabulary, voxelstructs, would be too impractical to render within the tile editor. The models are, too, stored as pngs, descending from the closest layer to the furthest, with the editor symbol positioned last. As an example, have the “big brick” tile that features prominently. The amount of times a layer repeates is controlled in the tile’s line in the init (ie: [#nm:"BigBrick", #sz:point(2,2), #specs:[1,1,1,1], #specs2:0, #tp:"voxelStruct", #repeatL:[1, 1, 1, 7], #bfTiles:0, #rnd:1, #ptPos:0, #tags:[]])

The RGB layers are used to generate the 3d model for the render, and the black outlines are what are shown in the tile editor.

Non-grid aligned objects, or “props” are placed in the prop editor, and they do use the 3d layers. This is because it is necessary for the prop editor’s function. While the tile editor is limited to the three major layers, the (2.5d) world is made up of 30 pixel layers (well, gameplay objects exist between layers 5 and 6, and water starts either between layer 0 and layer 1 or above layer 0) , and props can be placed as starting from any of these layers.

These are all assembled to make a 2.5d level... in red, green and blue. Not yet in the red read by the game. And also notice: there aren’t any plants! plants are generated by effects, which you can see haven’t been fully applied yet. The dark space surrounding most rooms is one, called “BlackGoo”

I don’t really have the strength of will to elaborate on effects, so onto lighting we go: the sunlight in a room is generated from an often crude monochrome image, which is projected onto the layers of the room after effects are generated, many of the intricacies of the lighting exist through light angle and distance.

In the last stage of rendering, the harsh red lightmap generated by this projection is used to determine whether a pixel is sunlit or in shadow. Light distance and angle are also saved for the game, so that it generates the shadows of gameplay objects in accordance.

All of this isn’t quite how it works but rather... an approximation. The editor still has many strange things, but this is what i’ve worked out from my own experience with it, as well as the experiences both of the modding community and others who worked on downpour. So yeah, basically rain world rooms go between 2.5d and 2d multiple times and it’s fucked up and the level editor is probably possessed by some kind of evil spirit. This piece of software is the hardest i’ve ever had to deal with, and apparently it’s even weirder internally, like half the code is in swedish. I haven’t even gotten into describing how the blues work, and i won’t, because i have no idea how the blues work, just that everything that isn’t controlled by the palette is rendered as blue.

#rw #rainworld #rain world #rw modding #this is what i've determined #love it tho mwah mwah #now you too can be confused by the inner workings of this technological wonder!#edit: tag said this software has tormented me for OVER half a decade #rather than almost #over would be impossible the game hasnt been released this long #so what i meant was: this software has tormented me for ALMOST half a decade

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notonewouldmind · 2 months

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I Need someone more knowledgeable than me to do an architectural analysis of witch hat atelier…. please please please I am begging you

#witch hat atelier #I have saved literally so many images of the building designs when they are featured in panels #but I have no idea how to determine exact time/art periods and inspiration because I don’t Actually know all that much about architecture #like I’m learning about baroque stuff rn and we talked about Bernini and Borromini #and how their architecture reflects the ideals and artistic styles of the time period as well as some form belying function #or the restraints of building technologies at the time #so I see a comic panel with like a coffered ceiling or pointed arches and I go WOAH #but idk what all the elements together resemble or anything #like I’m just curious what styles the author is inspired by is what I’m saying #anyway #I would watch a video essay on this tbh

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 1 year

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FINALLY somebody addressing why I am sad about Rasputin’s characterization this season. Let grandpa get ANGRY let him get PISSED. Let him drop warsats on people again

The three pillars of the Warmind Rasputin in the Destiny narrative are mystery, tragedy, and power. Those are the story roles he fulfills and the themes and settings he provides. The Warmind DLC emphasized mystery and power. Season of the Worthy emphasized power and tragedy. Season of the Seraph so far has leaned hard on the tragedy with a side of mystery. That’s fine. It’s better than fine; I’m living for a Rasputin season that finally hammers home to the general player population how emotional his entire story is (and not just the parts with the Iron Lords) if only because I’m no longer the crazy person sitting in the corner yelling this computer is extremely sad actually here’s a 12-page lore essay based on deep analysis and textual inference. We’ve never encountered Rasputin in such a weak state before and that makes it the best time for a vulnerable narrative. So this season has gone for tragedy with backup mystery. That’s fine.

But let us not neglect his third role.

Why is it so important for Rasputin to demonstrate his power? Or, put another way, why is it so satisfying when he does? When Red shot down the Almighty, regardless of whether you liked the season or even the event leading up to it, when the Almighty shattered and that shockwave cracked across the Tower I bet you felt something. We’ve seen display after display of might from a range of characters, yet nothing - maybe this is a function of who I hang out with, but - nothing evokes as visceral a response from players as when the Warmind acts. Why?

First off I think a lot of people enjoy the narrative of the sleeping giant, the dormant volcano rumbling to life. Remember when the ents go to war in The Two Towers? It’s a real thrill to watch something vast stir itself to war on our behalf, and I am one thousand percent here for that exact trope. Second, Rasputin has a clear and easy-to-sympathize-with motive for some righteous revenge. Third, he has every right to and absolutely should get very, very angry and boy is it cathartic to watch someone vent that kind of fury against the status quo. Fourth, sometimes it’s just fun to watch big space explosions. But after giving it a lot of thought I think there’s another key aspect: because Rasputin is our home team.

Rasputin represents humanity, far more than Guardians do. In the Destiny universe Rasputin embodies the apex of human technology, engineering, creativity, power - human, not Guardian. So we all have a little bit of an affinity for the Warmind, not us as Guardians but us, the players, as human beings, because he is humanity’s representative at the table of Destiny powers. The weapons Rasputin wields are weapons we recognize as our own. The technology he builds evokes real concrete tech we use. He quotes books we’ve read, he plays music we listen to, he cites our history. He’s the home team, and we are all, whether we know it or not, way down deep we are all cheering for him just a little bit, because he represents the real world we live in pitting itself against the greatest threats fantasy and scifi can conjure up. Nobody gave him Light or picked him out as the special Chosen One. All his strength is our strength. When he exercises that power, we see our own civilization sticking up for itself against the unknown. He is, in all goddamn seriousness, Flag Admiral Stabby.

So I guess I’m wrong about what I said at the beginning. There are four aspects, not three, to Rasputin’s role in Destiny: mystery, tragedy, power, and humanity. He is the representative of what the human race can build and do. So let him wake up and demonstrate that maybe humans came late to the table but we sure didn’t waste any time. Let him wake up and remind everyone that humanity’s fate won’t just decided by the immortal god-children who terrorized them for centuries in concert with alien factions with superior technology and much longer histories. Humans can do incredible things when they put their minds to it and they don’t need a paracausal permission slip to try. Let Rasputin show the solar system the creativity, tenacity, and stubborn defiance we like to imagine as our species’ defining traits. Let him bring a gun to a wizard fight. And let him win.

#Destiny 2 #the Warmind Rasputin #Season of the Seraph #I mean and also it is fun to watch things explode #but yeah I thought for a while to work all this out #and I think there's something here that's key to Rasputin's popularity #he is us #he is our technology and our weaponry but he is also our culture and history #no magic no blessings no special chosen fate #just steel and fire and determination #there's a colonial narrative in here about how humanity is barely hanging on in its own solar system #while far greater powers turn it into their playground and battlefield #but that's a whole other essay on its own.#output generated #overthinking is my superpower #this is the wager of existence

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craig960114 · 1 month

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why my brother sqaig will help me take over the world

In the imaginative world where Craig reigns supreme, his brother Sqaig emerges as a formidable ally in their quest for global domination. While Craig possesses cunning and adaptability, Sqaig brings his own unique strengths to the table, making them an unstoppable duo poised to reshape the world in their image.

Firstly, Sqaig complements Craig's abilities with his own brand of charisma and charm. While Craig may excel in clandestine operations and behind-the-scenes manipulation, Sqaig shines in the spotlight, captivating audiences with his magnetic personality and infectious enthusiasm. Together, they form a dynamic duo capable of rallying followers from all walks of life to their cause.

Secondly, Sqaig's ingenuity and creativity add a new dimension to their plans for world domination. While Craig may rely on tried-and-true tactics, Sqaig isn't afraid to think outside the box and innovate. Whether it's devising bold new strategies or leveraging emerging technologies, Sqaig's inventive spirit ensures that they stay one step ahead of their adversaries.

Furthermore, Sqaig's unwavering loyalty to his brother Craig strengthens their bond and solidifies their alliance. In a world where trust is a rare commodity, Sqaig's steadfast commitment to Craig serves as a powerful foundation for their partnership. Together, they weather the storms of opposition and adversity, emerging stronger and more determined than ever to achieve their shared goals.

In conclusion, the union of Craig and Sqaig represents a formidable force in the world of global politics and power struggles. With their complementary strengths, unwavering loyalty, and shared ambition, they stand poised to conquer all obstacles in their path and usher in a new era of dominance and influence. Beware the rise of Craig and Sqaig, for their reign may soon be upon us.

#In the imaginative world where Craig reigns supreme #his brother Sqaig emerges as a formidable ally in their quest for global domination. While Craig possesses cunning and adaptability #Sqaig brings his own unique strengths to the table #making them an unstoppable duo poised to reshape the world in their image.#Firstly #Sqaig complements Craig's abilities with his own brand of charisma and charm. While Craig may excel in clandestine operations and behind-th #Sqaig shines in the spotlight #captivating audiences with his magnetic personality and infectious enthusiasm. Together #they form a dynamic duo capable of rallying followers from all walks of life to their cause.#Secondly #Sqaig's ingenuity and creativity add a new dimension to their plans for world domination. While Craig may rely on tried-and-true tactics #Sqaig isn't afraid to think outside the box and innovate. Whether it's devising bold new strategies or leveraging emerging technologies #Sqaig's inventive spirit ensures that they stay one step ahead of their adversaries.#Furthermore #Sqaig's unwavering loyalty to his brother Craig strengthens their bond and solidifies their alliance. In a world where trust is a rare comm #Sqaig's steadfast commitment to Craig serves as a powerful foundation for their partnership. Together #they weather the storms of opposition and adversity #emerging stronger and more determined than ever to achieve their shared goals.#In conclusion #the union of Craig and Sqaig represents a formidable force in the world of global politics and power struggles. With their complementary st #unwavering loyalty #and shared ambition #they stand poised to conquer all obstacles in their path and usher in a new era of dominance and influence. Beware the rise of Craig and Sq #for their reign may soon be upon us.

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fingertipsmp3 · 12 days

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Someone needs to put me down like a sick dog

#i tried to vacuum my bedroom like a good and functional adult and my vacuum IMMEDIATELY refused to pick up ANYTHING whatsoever #like not even dust. not even microscopic dust #checked the roller thing and it’s just absolutely clogged with hair. absolutely nonfunctional with what looks like more hair than is on my #head currently. SO MUCH FOR HAIR WRAP TECHNOLOGY #i have had a shitty bob for as long as i’ve had this vacuum this cannot be real #if i truly am losing hair en masse why do i still look like coconut head. answer me that #so i was like fine. i’ll fix it later. let me change my bed #tell me why one of the straps on my mattress protector is broken??????#i’ve dumped all my bedding on the landing so i can lie here and scream for a bit because why. whyyyyyy #this was supposed to be a good day. my weed gummies and suetonius both arrived #i was going to clean up and go for a run and then come back; shower; make myself a nice tofu stir fry and get baked #but it is SO stupidly hot today and all my shit seems to be determined to break #at least nothing weird happened while i was cleaning the fridge. that was really nice actually #i did have to wash the vegetable drawer because an ice pop had leaked all over the bottom of it. but you can’t have everything #(i don’t want to hear any comments about how i keep ice pops in my vegetable drawer. my freezer is like the size of one singular pea #where am i SUPPOSED to keep ice pops)#personal

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thewanderingmask · 9 months

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CREATE AN ACCOUNT! SIGN IN WITH GOOGLE! WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASK US NICELY NOT TO SCRAPE YOUR DATA? ENJOY THESE UNSKIPPABLE ADS TO ENRICH YOUR EXPERIENCE

my guy i just wanted to play tetris

#i did not end up playing tetris.#i just wanted something to do for a few minutes while my stylus charged #instead i have determined the ipad game store is apparently 98% nightmare hellscape #i have been frightened by technology like a small prey animal and will now be going back into my cave #words words words

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

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#pluralistic #web3 #darth vader mba #conflict-free replicated data #CRDT #computer science #saas #Mark McGranaghan #Adam Wiggins #evernote #git #local-first computing #the cloud #cloud computing #enshittification #technological self-determination #Martin Kleppmann #Peter van Hardenberg

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