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This article was very touching. I'm 28 and I feel exactly the same way. I have spent quite some time thinking about the topic. I have even used the same words

This article was very touching. I'm 28 and I feel exactly the same way. I have spent quite some time thinking about the topic. I have even used the same words in conversations with friends. There is a generation of people that got into computers because they were a tool for empowerement and creativity. When I was a child, my younger sister would create movies editing frame by frame in MS Paint while I would learn Pascal to make a sequencer to play "melodies" using the PC speaker bell commands. Her friend would learn HTML to create a manually updated blog where she would post fantasy short stories. In the Internet, we all hang around with nicknames in chat rooms and learn to make flashy websites and get through the chain emails from relatives. We needed no Netflix or Facebook to share stuff, we had P2P and email and IRC. Then we learnt about GNU/Linux: the ultimate tool to get control of our machines. It was all organized chaos, instant communication that no one could control, limitless creativity, the ultimate dream of a post-capitalist anarchist society... At some point, some got to believe that if only these tools would become mainstream, the mainstream would adopt these values. A techo-revolution! This overestimated the transformative power of technology. What happened was otherwise: technology is now mainstream and has become a tool for social control and the ultimate frontier of consumerism. Tech didn't change society, society changed tech... I still want to believe in these utopic values. But I understand that it is a long way traveled in little steps whose significance is hard to see while at it. In the meantime it's often tiring and lonely to live in the computing underground. One has to explain people why you don't have a smartphone (and it gets harder to reach people without having Wassapp and so on), one has to explain relatives why you don't want to work for BigTechCorp, while tryin to stay "up to date" one has to go through the angry rants of Apple users on HN [1] or the celebration of the new Micro$oft facelift, and the collective systemic submission in the startup world in this new gold rush... The hardest part for me is to find stuff that I can do well and that I find valuable to the world... and still get paid for it. And I am an Software Engineer, the profession of the future! How can I be so obnoxious to have plenty of well paid jobs around me and not be interested in them? This makes me very sad and makes me feel deeply alienated... --- [1] You are not angry because of the design of a computer, you are angry at the realization that you are so personally invested in a technology that you have no control of, but has control over you!

barnacs 10y ago
Great write-up. I share your disappointment. I too though technology could be the answer but it looks like tech has simply transformed to suit the needs of this centralized, capitalist, consumerist slave society. As a software engineer myself, i'm also at a loss what to do. Disillusioned with the direction tech is taking, yet refusing to give up my values I've considered trying my hands at politics or writing. But often I feel like the doctrines are so deeply entrenched that some huge catastrophe is the only thing that could turn society around.
- mbrock 10y ago
  Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist? The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook.
  - arximboldi 10y ago
    Yes, interesting initiatives do exist! Still, "making a living" contributing to them is hard. But there are also coops exploring how to build non-alienating organizations... (I can thing of Igalia, I don't work for them but I keep it as inspiration for when/if I want to start a coop: http://igalia.com/ http://igalia.com/) There are some sparks of hope. And I am very thankful to all those that light them up. But when most people do the other way around and it is sometimes hard not to indulge into a bit of self-doubt and think: am I maybe the crazy one?
  - barnacs 10y ago
    > Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist? There are indeed some great projects and I also have some ideas myself and I do try to work on them every now and then but like I said, I've come to believe that the root of the problem is not the lack of "better" technology. I think no amount of coding will fix the problems I perceive. It's the other way around; once the issues are fixed, society will make better use of technology. > The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook. It's not just facebook. Our technological landscape is simply a reflection of the misguided values our society holds. It's the lack of critical thinking, the drive for individual gain as opposed to cooperation, unjustified social hierarchies, the daily struggle of survival through wage labour, the concentration of power, etc AND the heavy propaganda fueling it all. You can't just code a way out of this, people have tried and failed.

barnacs 10y ago

Great write-up. I share your disappointment. I too though technology could be the answer but it looks like tech has simply transformed to suit the needs of this centralized, capitalist, consumerist slave society. As a software engineer myself, i'm also at a loss what to do. Disillusioned with the direction tech is taking, yet refusing to give up my values I've considered trying my hands at politics or writing. But often I feel like the doctrines are so deeply entrenched that some huge catastrophe is the only thing that could turn society around.

mbrock 10y ago
Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist? The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook.
- arximboldi 10y ago
  Yes, interesting initiatives do exist! Still, "making a living" contributing to them is hard. But there are also coops exploring how to build non-alienating organizations... (I can thing of Igalia, I don't work for them but I keep it as inspiration for when/if I want to start a coop: http://igalia.com/ http://igalia.com/) There are some sparks of hope. And I am very thankful to all those that light them up. But when most people do the other way around and it is sometimes hard not to indulge into a bit of self-doubt and think: am I maybe the crazy one?
- barnacs 10y ago
  > Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist? There are indeed some great projects and I also have some ideas myself and I do try to work on them every now and then but like I said, I've come to believe that the root of the problem is not the lack of "better" technology. I think no amount of coding will fix the problems I perceive. It's the other way around; once the issues are fixed, society will make better use of technology. > The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook. It's not just facebook. Our technological landscape is simply a reflection of the misguided values our society holds. It's the lack of critical thinking, the drive for individual gain as opposed to cooperation, unjustified social hierarchies, the daily struggle of survival through wage labour, the concentration of power, etc AND the heavy propaganda fueling it all. You can't just code a way out of this, people have tried and failed.