3 ms·

I'm starting to feel that September is slowing and it might end at some point, that in the end it really is related to the technology adoption life cycle[1]. I

I'm starting to feel that September is slowing and it might end at some point, that in the end it really is related to the technology adoption life cycle[1]. If you look at the bell curve on that page, its integral is the technology penetration, that is a sigmoid: start slowly (initial period), accelerate (eternal september) for a while, and start to decrease the penetration speed. At some point, enough people will likely have knowledge about the technology that new entrants will take much less time for those already in to bring up. You can argue that those that enter the field now are adopting GAFAM rather than OSS alternatives, but I think that as long as you have the "eternal september" feeling, it means that a lot of people are jumping in, and will in turn help the upbringing of others later in the cycle. Hopefully FOSS culture and knowledge will become endemic in companies at some point; that's all I'm saying. But it's hard, at any point of the curve, to predict where we are in that cycle, and when it will end. I'd be curious to see some data on say, the number of Facebook users. I'm pretty sure it can be seen as a sigmoid.

72deluxe 7y ago
Are you sure? I am certain it's accelerating. More and more people use the Internet for their daily life and more and more services are "going digital". I know some 16 year olds (born 2003, after XP how depressing, I feel old) and the concept of NOT having the Internet and dirt cheap music streaming etc. is completely alien to them. They also have no concept of privacy and will install every service known to man on their devices (with the sucking up of data from them) without any thought because "it's free". This only increases the expectation of free (as in £0.00) software and services. When's the last time you met anyone without a Facebook account? Tell them you don't have a Facebook account or a WhatsApp account and they will look at you as if you are from Mars, and trying to explain to them why you don't want such an item is like talking to a brick wall. Try living without Google. It's all getting very difficult to do because the alternative is so very very easy.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  They are using the internet, but they're no longer internet citizens. They don't have any understanding of how it works (even on a basic level), and are being walled off into proprietary apps like cattle.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    I would tend to agree with this. But we don't have to spend much time upbringing them to that level. There are likely a few dynamics at play for this "eternal September": initial population size and increase rate, target population and its attrition rate, and transfer rate between the two. I'll see if I can run a few plots...
- toyg 7y ago
  I was installing everything that was “free” back in 1995. You cannot expect a teenager to be familiar with internet-privacy mantras; it’s actually horrible how we’ve created a situation where these poor kids are forced to learn and self-defend against an onslaught of trackers.
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    Agree! I can't see it getting any better for 99% of users either - you have to be quite technical. And once DNS over HTTPS is the norm (thanks Google + Microsoft) I literally have no clue what I'm going to do - I won't be able to stop any of the tracking domains requested or "telemetry". It's a nightmare and I think the Internet will be "over" for me at that point. eg. Little Snitch tells me all the outgoing requests on my Mac, I have to run piHole for DNS to block 27% of my DNS requests (yes that much), OOSU10 is mandatory on Windows 10 to turn off a boatload of telemetry, and every site on earth these days don't self-host - they pull from 20 different sites instead of just their own site. That's 21 different organisations that know I've visited their site, eg. visiting White Stuff's website (clothing) for my wife and I get whitestuff.com, googletagmanager.com, google-analytics.com, wsweboptimisejs.blob.core.windows.net, via.placeholder.com, tag.bounceexchange.com, fsm.attraqt.com, fonts.googleapis.com, data.rci.eggplant.cloud, cdn.optimizely.com, c3n4sovn.cloudimg.io It's ludicrous.
    - z3t4 7y ago
      You can block all IP ranges owned by the tracking companies. Sure many services will stop working. Some people go vegan, some people go GNU. There are plenty of content to discover beneath the mainstream commercials. There is so much content on the web, and the Internet is not just the web. That I'm sure you can live a happy life, without consuming the services which business model is centered around how many ads, trackers and spyware they can install on your devices.
      - 72deluxe 7y ago
        Yes this is true. I am quite happy living my life without all of this garbage, but more interested in how to effectively be able to stop this kind of garbage without constantly playing whack-a-mole.
Operyl 7y ago
What’s the link for [1]? I’m a bit curious now.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  I am sorry, I meant to link the Wikipedia article for that topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cyc... It is not as complete as I'd like it to be, but it has some interesting bits and links.

72deluxe 7y ago

Are you sure? I am certain it's accelerating. More and more people use the Internet for their daily life and more and more services are "going digital". I know some 16 year olds (born 2003, after XP how depressing, I feel old) and the concept of NOT having the Internet and dirt cheap music streaming etc. is completely alien to them. They also have no concept of privacy and will install every service known to man on their devices (with the sucking up of data from them) without any thought because "it's free". This only increases the expectation of free (as in £0.00) software and services. When's the last time you met anyone without a Facebook account? Tell them you don't have a Facebook account or a WhatsApp account and they will look at you as if you are from Mars, and trying to explain to them why you don't want such an item is like talking to a brick wall. Try living without Google. It's all getting very difficult to do because the alternative is so very very easy.

linuxftw 7y ago
They are using the internet, but they're no longer internet citizens. They don't have any understanding of how it works (even on a basic level), and are being walled off into proprietary apps like cattle.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  I would tend to agree with this. But we don't have to spend much time upbringing them to that level. There are likely a few dynamics at play for this "eternal September": initial population size and increase rate, target population and its attrition rate, and transfer rate between the two. I'll see if I can run a few plots...
toyg 7y ago
I was installing everything that was “free” back in 1995. You cannot expect a teenager to be familiar with internet-privacy mantras; it’s actually horrible how we’ve created a situation where these poor kids are forced to learn and self-defend against an onslaught of trackers.
- 72deluxe 7y ago
  Agree! I can't see it getting any better for 99% of users either - you have to be quite technical. And once DNS over HTTPS is the norm (thanks Google + Microsoft) I literally have no clue what I'm going to do - I won't be able to stop any of the tracking domains requested or "telemetry". It's a nightmare and I think the Internet will be "over" for me at that point. eg. Little Snitch tells me all the outgoing requests on my Mac, I have to run piHole for DNS to block 27% of my DNS requests (yes that much), OOSU10 is mandatory on Windows 10 to turn off a boatload of telemetry, and every site on earth these days don't self-host - they pull from 20 different sites instead of just their own site. That's 21 different organisations that know I've visited their site, eg. visiting White Stuff's website (clothing) for my wife and I get whitestuff.com, googletagmanager.com, google-analytics.com, wsweboptimisejs.blob.core.windows.net, via.placeholder.com, tag.bounceexchange.com, fsm.attraqt.com, fonts.googleapis.com, data.rci.eggplant.cloud, cdn.optimizely.com, c3n4sovn.cloudimg.io It's ludicrous.
  - z3t4 7y ago
    You can block all IP ranges owned by the tracking companies. Sure many services will stop working. Some people go vegan, some people go GNU. There are plenty of content to discover beneath the mainstream commercials. There is so much content on the web, and the Internet is not just the web. That I'm sure you can live a happy life, without consuming the services which business model is centered around how many ads, trackers and spyware they can install on your devices.
    - 72deluxe 7y ago
      Yes this is true. I am quite happy living my life without all of this garbage, but more interested in how to effectively be able to stop this kind of garbage without constantly playing whack-a-mole.

Operyl 7y ago

What’s the link for [1]? I’m a bit curious now.

MayeulC 7y ago
I am sorry, I meant to link the Wikipedia article for that topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cyc... It is not as complete as I'd like it to be, but it has some interesting bits and links.