The internet and our vision for the internet 20+ years ago was awesome because only nerds, visionaries, and weirdos were willing and capable enough to stomach the (relatively) terrible UX. The assumption being that the lowest common denominator of people could be thought that vision while the UX could be improved.
Turns out that’s wrong. The mainstream is online, and instead of adapting to the possibilities and new ways of thinking afforded by the internet, the mainstream instead choses to adapt the internet to cater to the needs of the lowest common denominator and keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s a complete compromise.
I’m note sure if the nerds and visionaries and weirdos just stopped fighting for the vision of the internet, or if they are being outvoted.
I’m not even sure that’s the case. I think who technology is catering to are a couple corporation and marketing people. Look at forced light mode on web sites that started at mid-00’s or the typical soulless 2D logo design of the 2010’s. Or non-removable batteries… Is this good for anyone? No, it’s only because of some people decided that’s how it’s gonna be, or to sell more shit.
Large corporations are making decisions on behalf of users, yes, but those decisions are ultimately still dictated by the users, because those users choose to use those systems and products instead of learning and adapting to the new possibilities afforded by the internet and community-driven enterprise. The non-removable battery example you share is an interesting one. I guess people are not incentivised to care/incentivised not to care (e.g. slimmer phone, cheaper manufacturing). We’ve got the same problem with the environment and climate change: lack of incentive to make good, sustainable decisions.
Scaling is a really hard problem to solve. The hardest part isn’t even the technology. It’s the user. It’s PEBKAC. Bad actors, catering to techno-phobes, competing/conflicted interest, teaching hard lessons and new concepts at scale. This takes a very long time. And unfortunately, even then people forget history and the lessons that come with it.
I am excited for fediverse though. It’s an opportunity to start fresh again, but most importantly the federation/defederation nature makes the dissolution by the masses slightly less of a concern.
Nobody can know everything, or have the time to care about stuff that’s not of major interest to them.
A stay-at-home parent with 6 adopted kids, or someone who just started a new furniture business, or a granpa who still drives a truck from 1950’s, simply don’t have the time to learn and understand every little aspect of modern technology, never mind the privacy implications or such.
Which is fine, problem is that the corpos then take advantage of the people. That’s what it is, not catering to them, taking advantage. Take the typical T&C one needs you neednto “agree” on to use the damn phone you just bought - is that designed to be useful to the user? Is that catering? No, it’s about stripping every bit of money, privacy and data legally and illegally possible while providing just enough service that the user is incentivized to stay on the chains and to buy more shit.
And if you don’t wanna, you just get punished or at least inconvenienced. This Cloudflare and other captcha shit - does it actually “check the security”? Bullshit, but if you come with a Chrome browser logged in to your Google and MS accounts like a good little user, you don’t get this kind of inconvenience.
The internet and our vision for the internet 20+ years ago was awesome because only nerds, visionaries, and weirdos were willing and capable enough to stomach the (relatively) terrible UX. The assumption being that the lowest common denominator of people could be thought that vision while the UX could be improved.
Turns out that’s wrong. The mainstream is online, and instead of adapting to the possibilities and new ways of thinking afforded by the internet, the mainstream instead choses to adapt the internet to cater to the needs of the lowest common denominator and keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s a complete compromise.
I’m note sure if the nerds and visionaries and weirdos just stopped fighting for the vision of the internet, or if they are being outvoted.
I’m not even sure that’s the case. I think who technology is catering to are a couple corporation and marketing people. Look at forced light mode on web sites that started at mid-00’s or the typical soulless 2D logo design of the 2010’s. Or non-removable batteries… Is this good for anyone? No, it’s only because of some people decided that’s how it’s gonna be, or to sell more shit.
Large corporations are making decisions on behalf of users, yes, but those decisions are ultimately still dictated by the users, because those users choose to use those systems and products instead of learning and adapting to the new possibilities afforded by the internet and community-driven enterprise. The non-removable battery example you share is an interesting one. I guess people are not incentivised to care/incentivised not to care (e.g. slimmer phone, cheaper manufacturing). We’ve got the same problem with the environment and climate change: lack of incentive to make good, sustainable decisions.
Scaling is a really hard problem to solve. The hardest part isn’t even the technology. It’s the user. It’s PEBKAC. Bad actors, catering to techno-phobes, competing/conflicted interest, teaching hard lessons and new concepts at scale. This takes a very long time. And unfortunately, even then people forget history and the lessons that come with it.
I am excited for fediverse though. It’s an opportunity to start fresh again, but most importantly the federation/defederation nature makes the dissolution by the masses slightly less of a concern.
Nobody can know everything, or have the time to care about stuff that’s not of major interest to them.
A stay-at-home parent with 6 adopted kids, or someone who just started a new furniture business, or a granpa who still drives a truck from 1950’s, simply don’t have the time to learn and understand every little aspect of modern technology, never mind the privacy implications or such.
Which is fine, problem is that the corpos then take advantage of the people. That’s what it is, not catering to them, taking advantage. Take the typical T&C one needs you neednto “agree” on to use the damn phone you just bought - is that designed to be useful to the user? Is that catering? No, it’s about stripping every bit of money, privacy and data legally and illegally possible while providing just enough service that the user is incentivized to stay on the chains and to buy more shit.
And if you don’t wanna, you just get punished or at least inconvenienced. This Cloudflare and other captcha shit - does it actually “check the security”? Bullshit, but if you come with a Chrome browser logged in to your Google and MS accounts like a good little user, you don’t get this kind of inconvenience.
It’s not the mainstream pushing this enshittification, it’s capitalists.