Although I also have fond memories of computing in the 90’s, the fears in this article seem to me both a little paranoid and unrealistic. Paranoid because ‘the

Although I also have fond memories of computing in the 90’s, the fears in this article seem to me both a little paranoid and unrealistic. Paranoid because ‘they’ will take away our freedom, a classic conservative fear reinforced by citing the Nazi minister of propaganda. Unrealistic because there is no going back in history. The future seems to be headed to a mix of local and remote computing, I’ll grant that. Especially with the looming dominance of GPT etc that so far requires resources not typically available locally. But what that means and how unfree we will become is not all that clear. I think the main problem with such a statement is that it mixes a political attitude with a capitalist one. It fails to appreciate how disinterested Big Tech really is in politics and people. It will do what it needs to do to make money now and in the future. There is probably not a lot of profit in prohibiting all kinds of computer usage. Yes, moderation on behalf of governments will remain a battlefield. But in the end no one forced us to go from BBS to Facebook. Enough people wanted to and then things became enshittified. You don’t need to force us, people can make the commons a shitty place all by themselves.