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I thought the digital divide will be a serious problem. It is in fact a problem now but not how I thought about it. I thought, in the future, everybody has a c

by ezoe 5y ago

I thought the digital divide will be a serious problem. It is in fact a problem now but not how I thought about it. I thought, in the future, everybody has a computer so it will be a part of basic literacy. Most of our generation will be obsolete because we can't stand a chance against people who all had computers in their home at their birth. Then, the smartphone was invented and most people were just satisfied with that. Now there is even less people who know how to use the keyboard than our generation. No matter how hard you try, you can't beat the efficiency of keyboard by palm-size touch screen input device on writing. In the late 1990s to 2000s, there were so many personal text web sites, public forums and chats in my language, Japanese. Now it's all gone. There is no place in the modern Internet I can enjoy serious text-based communication in Japanese. Because, everyone use the smartphone now and it's so inefficient to write a serious text with it. I also didn't anticipated the huge rise of SaaS. A software that depends remote server to function. I was the believer of P2P technology in 2000s. I believed future network will work on top of P2P mesh network. It failed for various reasons but mostly too inefficient to scale. Then I see the rise of cryptocurrency. It's horrible. Nobody really cares about the technology. People relies on SaaS wallet service rather than hosting full node. It's the worst hybrid of server-client and P2P. Inefficient and still has authority. NFT... it doesn't even host data in the blockchain! TITAN... it's not a stablecoin. It's just a ponzi-scheme-coin. I hate the smartphone. But right now, it's really hard to avoid programming job that doesn't involve the smartphone. Even if I don't directly need to deal with it, it still indirectly support the smartphone, further helping the spread of inefficient input device for the writing. I lost all hope for the future right now. It will be even more orwellian world. Most of the computation will be done in the server side and our computer is mere thin-client to the server. Everything is censored and regulated. I wouldn't surprise we lost the ability to write freely.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
>>In the late 1990s to 2000s, there were so many personal text web sites, public forums and chats in my language, Japanese. Now it's all gone. There is no place in the modern Internet I can enjoy serious text-based communication in Japanese. Because, everyone use the smartphone now and it's so inefficient to write a serious text with it. If you mean forums in the vein of Ayashii World, they still exist in the form of 2channel/Futaba. Unless you mean something else.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Gradually, I've learned that the history of almost all technology is this: 1. Smart, well-meaning people see a problem, and try to craft a solution. 2. Bad actors completely ignore these good intentions and use the new invention for money and power, harming or exploiting the general population in the process. This isn't to say progress is never made, but the lion's share of the benefits of any new tech always ends up going right back to the rich and powerful that didn't need it in the first place. I wasn't a programmer in the 90's, but I did grow up then, and into the hacker culture of the 00s. Looking back, I feel comradeship for the radicals in the 60s. A revolution was in the air, things were going to change! And then it all petered away to nothing. Smart, well-meaning people constantly dream of freeing everyone: from poverty, or political oppression, or ideological entanglement. One more advance, one more theory or piece of tech and then we'll have it! But the general populace will never be free, because they don't want to be. On an unconscious level, they desire their cage. Freedom is scary and uncomfortable. That's why smartphones replaced PCs, and why software and the web became a closed, user-hostile morass. Most people do not want the power to self-actualize. They just want to be kept comfortable until they die.

by ezoe 5y ago

Dracophoenix 5y ago

>>In the late 1990s to 2000s, there were so many personal text web sites, public forums and chats in my language, Japanese. Now it's all gone. There is no place in the modern Internet I can enjoy serious text-based communication in Japanese. Because, everyone use the smartphone now and it's so inefficient to write a serious text with it. If you mean forums in the vein of Ayashii World, they still exist in the form of 2channel/Futaba. Unless you mean something else.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

Gradually, I've learned that the history of almost all technology is this: 1. Smart, well-meaning people see a problem, and try to craft a solution. 2. Bad actors completely ignore these good intentions and use the new invention for money and power, harming or exploiting the general population in the process. This isn't to say progress is never made, but the lion's share of the benefits of any new tech always ends up going right back to the rich and powerful that didn't need it in the first place. I wasn't a programmer in the 90's, but I did grow up then, and into the hacker culture of the 00s. Looking back, I feel comradeship for the radicals in the 60s. A revolution was in the air, things were going to change! And then it all petered away to nothing. Smart, well-meaning people constantly dream of freeing everyone: from poverty, or political oppression, or ideological entanglement. One more advance, one more theory or piece of tech and then we'll have it! But the general populace will never be free, because they don't want to be. On an unconscious level, they desire their cage. Freedom is scary and uncomfortable. That's why smartphones replaced PCs, and why software and the web became a closed, user-hostile morass. Most people do not want the power to self-actualize. They just want to be kept comfortable until they die.