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I really like it when people try to give practical advice after describing problems. Agree with most of what's written in the post. But I'd like to discuss one

by slx26 6y ago

I really like it when people try to give practical advice after describing problems. Agree with most of what's written in the post. But I'd like to discuss one part of it: > [...] the major websites of today's web are not built for the visitor, but as means of using her. To me, here lies a key point that both the writer and many commenters here in HN seemed to miss in 2017. What's written here is just a consequence, and the post goes on to develop it through all its length... but why did the dynamics change in that way? What's the underlying reason for the shift? Some comments here in HN mentioned it: internet becoming a marketplace. With both its good and bad side-effects. It's an extremely complex issue, but money does completely shape dynamics of current society, and therefore internet too, and it leaves us without spaces that aren't conditioned by it. At small scale it doesn't seem a big problem, or we rationalize it because everyone needs money to survive... But it really shapes the world, and we can't simply ignore the ugly sides of it and pretend we can solve it without ever involving the discussion about money and the dynamics it generates. The "magic" the post talks about only needs three ingredients: human curiosity, time (to develop that curiosity), and spaces (to host those humans and their time). Human curiosity and creativity will always exist as long as we don't go extinct. About time... well, we can satisfy our basic needs more efficiently than ever... and yet, ironically, we are using the newly freed time to create "more competitive" products that focus on enslaving the potential of our fellow human beings through infinite-scroll addiction, fear of missing out, instant gratification, attention grabbing and other kinds of biases and "bugs" in the human system. And finally spaces. Well, nothing left. If the only accessible spaces require money or work-to-generate-money, you close the circle and can't scape the landscape and conditioning I was describing. Even if there are some spaces left, they tend to fell into oblivion against the competition. Too hard to escape, too easy to rationalize. And honestly, I don't think there's any game-changer discussion about morality standards here. Morals must play a very important part in getting us to start a change (and by us I mean the kind of people that's most directly involved in tech, like this HN crowd), but as long as we don't try to really disrupt at least some of the dynamics generated by money-profit-survival-motivations, I'm somewhat skeptical we will be able to move the needle, because efforts will be eaten by the competition even if we never wanted to play under those rules. Let's hope I'm mistaken and it's easier to solve.

kubanczyk 6y ago
That's well put. I'd challenge the assumption that money completely shapes the internet. After all, Wikipedia did happen relatively recently, and I presume it's what you mean by "necessary space". Having that example in mind, what do you feel is the next step (in ethical norms?...) that would lead to something even more gratuitous? I'm non-native and I searched for a while for a better word than "gratuitous" here. The vocabulary looks a bit narrow. I mean for example "non-profit", firstly, contains a negation and, secondly, implies that profit can only be measured financially. "Free" on the other hand is too broad, too imprecise.
- slx26 6y ago
  Yes, "completely" was not the appropriate word. I meant it as "it has an enormous weight", rather than "it completely defines (as the one and only factor)". I don't really speak english either. About more gratuitous, it's tricky, and the problem is not that Wikipedia isn't free enough, but that it's kind of an exception. There are quite a few ways in which "free spaces" can compete/coexist with "commercial spaces". The first group of options involves the commercial spaces not eating the whole landscape and getting all the attention (drowning out the rest). In theory this can happen when: there's no viable lucrative strategy for the space (not the case here), the commercial explotation of the space incurs in obvious ethical concerns which can't be covered up (some might think this is the case right now, but for the general public it is not, or companies can keep the perception muddy enough, or the trade-offs are considered acceptable in practice even if the issue is acknowledged [this could be discussed much more in depth]), the commercial spaces degrade enough for free spaces to catch up and get enough attention (but this is likely to be only temporary), the kind of value that commercial spaces can provide is different from the value that free spaces can provide (I'm tempted to believe that this can only happen when the commercial space is not profitable [so, back to the first case], but maybe there are some forms of social organization / solidarity that can only happen in free spaces?), there's regulation specifically protecting free spaces (not sure how this would go or if they wouldn't become counter-productive artificial walls), or they provide the same~ value but the free version has less ethical concerns (some open software can go here, but in most cases where open source succeeds, it's because it's good enough... but free, in which case it simply becomes more accessible [in a capitalist world, this is subsidization. we are actually doing good on the software side, but then there's also hardware and maintenance, and... well, that's for the next point]). Most of these are already happening. Right now it's not enough, but hey, maybe the current recipe is good and we just need to keep cooking... I'm not completely skeptical, but I'm also interested on others options, like reducing our dependence / weakening commercial spaces, talking about that publicly. There's a balance. The more critical money is to our survival, the less we care about the ethics of what we do. And in general too: everyone yells when they get stomped, but when it comes to our own jobs we are much more willing to rationalize stomping on others. And maybe society has a very perverse idea of what "value" and "job" mean and we need to get more to the root of the issue. Let's get people to have a clearer idea of what contributing positively to the world means, and have them focus first on what they are creating or offering to others. Most of us already agree~ with that, but there seems to be too much noise and too many options, and we can't organize effectively. Maybe trying to find "the" organization or "the" consensus is impractical. Maybe we have to find more "exceptions" like Wikipedia. I'm personally favoring projects that I can start with little money, trying to free as much time as possible to be able to work on them, and try to make things that can work starting from my town, that can get people involved beyond the online world, and that can expand with clearly different premises from commercial projects. And keep scaling. If we can create enough exceptions like Wikipedia on different fronts, taking advantage of the inertia of good ideas, and getting people involved in new free spaces instead of discussing "how could they ever come to life", that might be a good way to start moving in a different direction.

by slx26 6y ago

kubanczyk 6y ago

That's well put. I'd challenge the assumption that money completely shapes the internet. After all, Wikipedia did happen relatively recently, and I presume it's what you mean by "necessary space". Having that example in mind, what do you feel is the next step (in ethical norms?...) that would lead to something even more gratuitous? I'm non-native and I searched for a while for a better word than "gratuitous" here. The vocabulary looks a bit narrow. I mean for example "non-profit", firstly, contains a negation and, secondly, implies that profit can only be measured financially. "Free" on the other hand is too broad, too imprecise.

slx26 6y ago
Yes, "completely" was not the appropriate word. I meant it as "it has an enormous weight", rather than "it completely defines (as the one and only factor)". I don't really speak english either. About more gratuitous, it's tricky, and the problem is not that Wikipedia isn't free enough, but that it's kind of an exception. There are quite a few ways in which "free spaces" can compete/coexist with "commercial spaces". The first group of options involves the commercial spaces not eating the whole landscape and getting all the attention (drowning out the rest). In theory this can happen when: there's no viable lucrative strategy for the space (not the case here), the commercial explotation of the space incurs in obvious ethical concerns which can't be covered up (some might think this is the case right now, but for the general public it is not, or companies can keep the perception muddy enough, or the trade-offs are considered acceptable in practice even if the issue is acknowledged [this could be discussed much more in depth]), the commercial spaces degrade enough for free spaces to catch up and get enough attention (but this is likely to be only temporary), the kind of value that commercial spaces can provide is different from the value that free spaces can provide (I'm tempted to believe that this can only happen when the commercial space is not profitable [so, back to the first case], but maybe there are some forms of social organization / solidarity that can only happen in free spaces?), there's regulation specifically protecting free spaces (not sure how this would go or if they wouldn't become counter-productive artificial walls), or they provide the same~ value but the free version has less ethical concerns (some open software can go here, but in most cases where open source succeeds, it's because it's good enough... but free, in which case it simply becomes more accessible [in a capitalist world, this is subsidization. we are actually doing good on the software side, but then there's also hardware and maintenance, and... well, that's for the next point]). Most of these are already happening. Right now it's not enough, but hey, maybe the current recipe is good and we just need to keep cooking... I'm not completely skeptical, but I'm also interested on others options, like reducing our dependence / weakening commercial spaces, talking about that publicly. There's a balance. The more critical money is to our survival, the less we care about the ethics of what we do. And in general too: everyone yells when they get stomped, but when it comes to our own jobs we are much more willing to rationalize stomping on others. And maybe society has a very perverse idea of what "value" and "job" mean and we need to get more to the root of the issue. Let's get people to have a clearer idea of what contributing positively to the world means, and have them focus first on what they are creating or offering to others. Most of us already agree~ with that, but there seems to be too much noise and too many options, and we can't organize effectively. Maybe trying to find "the" organization or "the" consensus is impractical. Maybe we have to find more "exceptions" like Wikipedia. I'm personally favoring projects that I can start with little money, trying to free as much time as possible to be able to work on them, and try to make things that can work starting from my town, that can get people involved beyond the online world, and that can expand with clearly different premises from commercial projects. And keep scaling. If we can create enough exceptions like Wikipedia on different fronts, taking advantage of the inertia of good ideas, and getting people involved in new free spaces instead of discussing "how could they ever come to life", that might be a good way to start moving in a different direction.