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Because pop-technology is void of any sort of spirit, culture or enthusiasm. It's all buzzwords, sale pitches and wheel reinventing put in a new wrapper and wal

Because pop-technology is void of any sort of spirit, culture or enthusiasm. It's all buzzwords, sale pitches and wheel reinventing put in a new wrapper and walled gardens. What restored faith in technology for me personally is libre software hacker movement. It's just so fun to enjoy technology without all of that fake sillicon valley culture. It's fun to _own_ technology and understand it and be able to hack it and experience it with like minded individuals. If you're burned out try to find job in libre software, it won't pay as much but as far as spiritual rewards - it's the most you can get from this medium.

shp0ngle 6y ago
Interesting is that I got the opposite experience. As all the libre stuff I have been working on started to be used and contributed to by the very forces it tried to destroy. Why is it so great to work on free software when it ends up being used to sell more AWS subscriptions and by some Facebook library to sell more ads I realized libre movement is a mirage.... you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bunch of software Linux ended up powering Android, which is more closed than Windows ever was. Hurray I guess
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  The path to happiness when writing open source software is to create stuff that's (almost) entirely useless to other people ;) (I'm only half joking, just pick a niche topic that's fun for you without thinking of others, there's a huge terra incognita of fun-but-useless software to explore, and not many people venture there).
- kabacha 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood me; as much as I believe in libre movement ideology my point was from a more pragmatic point of view. Libre software is more fun to work with because you own it; it's open it's free and has community of people working on it. It's not some bits in the cloud that do stuff when you click a button and the only power you have is support email that will be replied by a robot — it's an actual open project that you can feel. Even if you are not a programmer you can hire someone to create change for you. Sure sometimes it's ugly, and sometimes there's conflict; sometimes it's insufficient and out-dated but it's much more spiritually empowering when you own the software and have the freedoms that come with libre software. It's much easier to enjoy technology when it's actually there.
- throwaway092835 6y ago
  permissive licenses allowed turning a social movement into unpaid labor for FAANGs. Instead of providing libre computing all the way to the end users, many developers are writing unpaid applications and libraries that will be locked down into some devices or SaaS. > I realized libre movement is a mirage.... No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost. > you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bunch of software Every single bit counts and makes a shift.
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    > No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost. Two decades? The "year of Linux desktop" meme is older than that. GNU was created 1984. It's 34 years old now. Software in 1984 was wildly different than now. But while free software is now more available than back then, it's not really much help to the world at large, is it.
valand 6y ago
> Because pop-technology is void of any sort of spirit, culture or enthusiasm. It's all buzzwords, sale pitches and wheel reinventing put in a new wrapper and walled gardens. This is sad but true, though. Those buzzwords are marketing techniques, and those riding the trains of trends and buzzwords are the one getting the spotlight because human naturally follow blings and other human attentions are indeed power. It's sad that people who work with careful, thoughtful, artful, and fortified with engineering and scientific craftsmanship rarely have the means to prove themselves. Btw, what is libre software hacker movement, though?
- kabacha 6y ago
  Hacking (as per original MIT definition) means doing something clever or novel because of the love of the medium not to satisfy some sort of demand or business opportunity. It's in the spirit of "look at this cool thing you can do". I'm sure you're familiar with free(libre) software already and "libre hacking" is just that - some relatively useless fun programs or tools that people share under libre license. My favorite example that I use every day would be doge[1] project that just prints a doge meme based on your terminal history whenever you startup your terminal. It has no real purpose other than make you smile an appreciate technology from the novelty point of view. 1 - https://github.com/thiderman/doge https://github.com/thiderman/doge
  - valand 6y ago
    I'm more familiar with hacking than libre I often go for itch.io. Half of it are these kind of code as an art stuff. Hidden gem.

shp0ngle 6y ago

Interesting is that I got the opposite experience. As all the libre stuff I have been working on started to be used and contributed to by the very forces it tried to destroy. Why is it so great to work on free software when it ends up being used to sell more AWS subscriptions and by some Facebook library to sell more ads I realized libre movement is a mirage.... you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bunch of software Linux ended up powering Android, which is more closed than Windows ever was. Hurray I guess

flohofwoe 6y ago
The path to happiness when writing open source software is to create stuff that's (almost) entirely useless to other people ;) (I'm only half joking, just pick a niche topic that's fun for you without thinking of others, there's a huge terra incognita of fun-but-useless software to explore, and not many people venture there).
kabacha 6y ago
I think you misunderstood me; as much as I believe in libre movement ideology my point was from a more pragmatic point of view. Libre software is more fun to work with because you own it; it's open it's free and has community of people working on it. It's not some bits in the cloud that do stuff when you click a button and the only power you have is support email that will be replied by a robot — it's an actual open project that you can feel. Even if you are not a programmer you can hire someone to create change for you. Sure sometimes it's ugly, and sometimes there's conflict; sometimes it's insufficient and out-dated but it's much more spiritually empowering when you own the software and have the freedoms that come with libre software. It's much easier to enjoy technology when it's actually there.
throwaway092835 6y ago
permissive licenses allowed turning a social movement into unpaid labor for FAANGs. Instead of providing libre computing all the way to the end users, many developers are writing unpaid applications and libraries that will be locked down into some devices or SaaS. > I realized libre movement is a mirage.... No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost. > you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bunch of software Every single bit counts and makes a shift.
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  > No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost. Two decades? The "year of Linux desktop" meme is older than that. GNU was created 1984. It's 34 years old now. Software in 1984 was wildly different than now. But while free software is now more available than back then, it's not really much help to the world at large, is it.

valand 6y ago

> Because pop-technology is void of any sort of spirit, culture or enthusiasm. It's all buzzwords, sale pitches and wheel reinventing put in a new wrapper and walled gardens. This is sad but true, though. Those buzzwords are marketing techniques, and those riding the trains of trends and buzzwords are the one getting the spotlight because human naturally follow blings and other human attentions are indeed power. It's sad that people who work with careful, thoughtful, artful, and fortified with engineering and scientific craftsmanship rarely have the means to prove themselves. Btw, what is libre software hacker movement, though?

kabacha 6y ago
Hacking (as per original MIT definition) means doing something clever or novel because of the love of the medium not to satisfy some sort of demand or business opportunity. It's in the spirit of "look at this cool thing you can do". I'm sure you're familiar with free(libre) software already and "libre hacking" is just that - some relatively useless fun programs or tools that people share under libre license. My favorite example that I use every day would be doge[1] project that just prints a doge meme based on your terminal history whenever you startup your terminal. It has no real purpose other than make you smile an appreciate technology from the novelty point of view. 1 - https://github.com/thiderman/doge https://github.com/thiderman/doge
- valand 6y ago
  I'm more familiar with hacking than libre I often go for itch.io. Half of it are these kind of code as an art stuff. Hidden gem.