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I am older than you and have gone through the same. Let me share a few thoughts. I am not trying to change your mind, just riffing. Thought #1: You don't have

I am older than you and have gone through the same. Let me share a few thoughts. I am not trying to change your mind, just riffing. Thought #1: You don't have to use technology. I have a laptop, but I do not use much software aside from what's required to interact with people and do my work. I have some other technology in my house, such as various home-built robots, but they are only used when I am actively working. Thought #2: There is still a lot of software that is making the world a better place. My mother was in a serious car accident and never really got her mobility back. I am not a fan of car culture, but it's the world we live in. ADAS systems are saving people from life-altering car accidents every day. Thought #3: There is a lot of very positive technology that is totally impossible without software. Genetics is the elephant in the room, of course, since basically everything about the field is totally impossible without good software. But basically every natural science is similar at this point. Even ecology. Thought #4 is about this quote: > If the internet weren't responsible for my coming out I'd say burn it all down. Even with marriage equality and other progress, I do not think the modern transgender rights movement would have been at all possible without the internet. My final thought is a different perspective on the final thought of the essay: > No one knows what they’re doing, and it’s a civilizational problem. There is a lot of essential complexity that we absolutely need in order to make the world a better place -- in biotechnology, energy, and materials in particular. Without modern information retrieval systems, I think our civilization would stop making progress and rapidly collapse.

sverona 4y ago
> Even with marriage equality and other progress, I do not think the modern transgender rights movement would have been at all possible without the internet. This is what kills me, because it's absolutely right. I'm trans and my people are all I have. I would love to have just a dumbphone, but being alone again, searching desperately for anyone who gets it, whom I can see and know knows me --- that is soul-rendingly painful. We are a diaspora connected by wires and lights on a screen. The knowledge that I'm not alone, I'm not crazy, I'm not broken saved my life. I can't go back now.
phoehne 4y ago
We should totally have nice things. I hundred percent agree. But I have this nightmare that one day a cloud provider goes bankrupt because they can't understand why half their fleet won't boot. And as the go through the entire process, from the initial PXE boot to the full boot and so on, there are just too many ways things can break. They fix one 'issue' only to realize it wasn't the issue. Then the next, issue, and so on, but not coming up for days. And the issue might even be completely out of their control in the proprietary, CPU vendor supplied blob, or the network OEM supplied blob, or the storage supplied blob, or the TPM blob, or the way they rolled certs (because everyone screws that up at some point), etc. etc. And the complexity isn't essential. It's a byproduct of short-term choices, compromises, lowest common denominator thinking, and a lack of risk taking on new approaches to the problem. This leads to systems we cannot reason over. Companies like 0xide computer are taking a stab at these kinds of problems.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  I do not have this worry about the biggest cloud providers, actually. I do have this worry about basically everything outside of the IT sector -- particularly the industrial and agricultural sectors.

sverona 4y ago

> Even with marriage equality and other progress, I do not think the modern transgender rights movement would have been at all possible without the internet. This is what kills me, because it's absolutely right. I'm trans and my people are all I have. I would love to have just a dumbphone, but being alone again, searching desperately for anyone who gets it, whom I can see and know knows me --- that is soul-rendingly painful. We are a diaspora connected by wires and lights on a screen. The knowledge that I'm not alone, I'm not crazy, I'm not broken saved my life. I can't go back now.

phoehne 4y ago

We should totally have nice things. I hundred percent agree. But I have this nightmare that one day a cloud provider goes bankrupt because they can't understand why half their fleet won't boot. And as the go through the entire process, from the initial PXE boot to the full boot and so on, there are just too many ways things can break. They fix one 'issue' only to realize it wasn't the issue. Then the next, issue, and so on, but not coming up for days. And the issue might even be completely out of their control in the proprietary, CPU vendor supplied blob, or the network OEM supplied blob, or the storage supplied blob, or the TPM blob, or the way they rolled certs (because everyone screws that up at some point), etc. etc. And the complexity isn't essential. It's a byproduct of short-term choices, compromises, lowest common denominator thinking, and a lack of risk taking on new approaches to the problem. This leads to systems we cannot reason over. Companies like 0xide computer are taking a stab at these kinds of problems.

thwayunion 4y ago
I do not have this worry about the biggest cloud providers, actually. I do have this worry about basically everything outside of the IT sector -- particularly the industrial and agricultural sectors.