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Because smartphones are designed to keep you stupid. Computer literacy means you are able to poke holes in their shitty abstractions. The industry does not want

Because smartphones are designed to keep you stupid. Computer literacy means you are able to poke holes in their shitty abstractions. The industry does not want you programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming. Preferably with your credit card.

mharig 4y ago
Not only the industry.
safety1st 4y ago
Before people dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, it's 100% correct. It's not even a radical view. * Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education because an educated population tends to start demanding more freedoms. * Industrial barons never wanted their factory workers to learn about unions because once they did, sure enough they wanted to unionize. * To desire and defend your digital rights you need to understand how the digital world works, and what's at stake. Big tech doesn't want you thinking about uncomfortable things like that. They want you to pay your monthly fees, watch the ads they put in front of you, go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. Virtually everyone with power, since the beginning of civilization, has preferred for their subjects to be poorly informed about anything that threatens their power.
- gilmore606 4y ago
  > Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education This seems to have been untrue in the USSR, and it seems currently untrue in China, the first two big authoritarian governments that came to my mind. Also "because" is doing the heavy lifting in your sentence, I do wonder how you arrived at that causality.
  - Kinrany 4y ago
    The civic education in USSR was clearly not good if you look at the current state of Russia.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    The term "civic education" means different things to different people. In North Korea everyone is blanketed with "civic education" on a daily basis, but it isn't the sort of civics that leads to democracy.
  - antifa 4y ago
    In those two counties, sometimes the term "authoritarian" just means the rich aren't free to endlessly exploit the poor. In US politics, property rights are far more important than human rights, so while it might still be accurate to call all three countries authoritarian, the rhetoric just gets confusing/ambiguous and is mostly just propaganda anyways. We love overstating how much democracy we have and understating how much democracy our competitors have.
    - safety1st 4y ago
      The governments of the two authoritarian countries under discussion were responsible for two of the largest mass murders in history. Your apologies for some of the greatest criminals in history not withstanding, my original comment referred to the concept of a good civic education. There was some debate in the responses about what that constitutes. I think it includes a comparative analysis of various systems of government and how people under those systems fare. What we can say about the systems in the USSR and China is that as a matter of undisputed fact, people living under those systems are poorer and more likely to be subject to arbitrary detention or execution than the typical citizens of the world's democratic countries. A good civic education will teach that because it is a fact. A bad civic education will use propaganda to conceal facts like those.
      - antifa 4y ago
        This reply is a perfect example of the "overstate/understate" propoganda in action. Really? The United States didn't commit mass murder? Read a history book. Can you imagine school children in China, one of them asks in a political science class "What's wrong with US democracy?" and nobody can give them an answer without first mentioning the genocide of native americans, the mass graves in latin american, the contras, Iraq.
        safety1st 4y ago
        There really is no comparison unless your goal is to make China look good by distorting the facts. The highest estimate I've seen for deaths on the Trail of Tears is 15K. Iraq was perhaps 100K-200K. The Chinese killed some 75,000,000 people (mostly their own) in the 20th century. Plus, why did you make this about the US? Have you forgotten that other democracies exist? I was talking about the human rights track records of democracies in general versus authoritarian governments in general. Democracies consistently have better records. You're the one who decided to cherry pick one of the worse democracies (and still failed to demonstrate that it is as bad as one of the worst authoritarian states).
wongarsu 4y ago
> The industry does not want you [...] creating Twitter, Instagram and TikTok would like to differ. User created content is still a major thing, even if we stopped calling it web 2.0. Most of that just happens in other domains than programming (though Roblox exists, so programming does happen too).
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  Not sure that's true considering all 3 of those platforms make their money through advertising. Like, yeah users are making content, but that's hardly the point.
  - hikawaii 4y ago
    They make their money selling ads against product that they are incapable of creating, because aren't CallMeKhris or Linus or whoever.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  Only because they get to monetize the consumption of your content. In fact it is you who is building their product for them. Way cheaper than hiring writers or a video production team!
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  There's a world of difference in the creativity that goes into a photo of lunch or a selfie versus producing something of substance.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Poor, sweet summer child. Their exploitation of your effort isn't creative freedom. For a poignant dramatization see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits and then when you feel like reading a lot of sad history just start reading books and articles about the recording industry.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
mixmastamyk 4y ago
I do remember that Apple keynotes always bragged early about how many CCs they had on file. Would rephrase as the desire to keep you dependent is a result of the control and cashflow they desire. But yeah, we called TV the idiot box for similar reasons.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
> The industry does not want you programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few and smartphone OS developers would never in a million years promote learning how to program on their devices. From my end it looks like the opposite of all of that is happening. I went to a school in "THE GOLDEN AGE" of 8-bit micros and I was the only one out of 1,100 who used the single room of Apple IIs to type in BASIC programs. My daughters went to a school that has classes on programming, including Android development. Turbo Pascal used to be so expensive I couldn't afford it. Android studio is $0.00 and the (free) resources for development that apple and google openly distribute make many of my college classes look pathetic.
- dTal 4y ago
  >For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few In a way, they are. They are gatekept in a way that is transparent to you because you find yourself on the correct side of the gate. Apple's gatekeeping is overt, while Google's is more covert: 1) They require a desktop computer - a powerful one at that. Apple requires a Mac. It would be trivial to release an app builder that ran on the phone, but they don't. Apple even outright forbids such apps, or any kind of interpreted environment. Apple also forbids installing things on stock iPhones without passing through Apple servers, and they require you to pay $99 and be over 18 for that privilege. This completely kneecaps the development of any kind of "demoscene". 2) They are ridiculously baroque. I mean awful. Look at this[0] Hello World - "the simplest Android app". Note the wall of perplexing XML, and complex directory tree. Note the phrase "You don't need to understand this code fully." This is not irreducible complexity, this is the result of an attitude that the only people who should be developing apps are professionals with a lot of experience and patience. There is 0 room for casual exploration in the app ecosystem. Hell, I enjoy programming, I can knock up a fun demo in LOVE in under a minute, I carry a smartphone everywhere, and yet I've never written a smartphone app. Not once. It's too much of a pain. You wrote BASIC programs for fun in school? So did I, on my calculator, at a rate of maybe 1 a day. Show me the kid who writes smartphone apps like that. [0] https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-simplest-android-app-hello-world--cms-35175 https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-simplest-android-app...

mharig 4y ago

Not only the industry.

safety1st 4y ago

Before people dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, it's 100% correct. It's not even a radical view. * Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education because an educated population tends to start demanding more freedoms. * Industrial barons never wanted their factory workers to learn about unions because once they did, sure enough they wanted to unionize. * To desire and defend your digital rights you need to understand how the digital world works, and what's at stake. Big tech doesn't want you thinking about uncomfortable things like that. They want you to pay your monthly fees, watch the ads they put in front of you, go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. Virtually everyone with power, since the beginning of civilization, has preferred for their subjects to be poorly informed about anything that threatens their power.

gilmore606 4y ago
> Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education This seems to have been untrue in the USSR, and it seems currently untrue in China, the first two big authoritarian governments that came to my mind. Also "because" is doing the heavy lifting in your sentence, I do wonder how you arrived at that causality.
- Kinrany 4y ago
  The civic education in USSR was clearly not good if you look at the current state of Russia.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  The term "civic education" means different things to different people. In North Korea everyone is blanketed with "civic education" on a daily basis, but it isn't the sort of civics that leads to democracy.
- antifa 4y ago
  In those two counties, sometimes the term "authoritarian" just means the rich aren't free to endlessly exploit the poor. In US politics, property rights are far more important than human rights, so while it might still be accurate to call all three countries authoritarian, the rhetoric just gets confusing/ambiguous and is mostly just propaganda anyways. We love overstating how much democracy we have and understating how much democracy our competitors have.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    The governments of the two authoritarian countries under discussion were responsible for two of the largest mass murders in history. Your apologies for some of the greatest criminals in history not withstanding, my original comment referred to the concept of a good civic education. There was some debate in the responses about what that constitutes. I think it includes a comparative analysis of various systems of government and how people under those systems fare. What we can say about the systems in the USSR and China is that as a matter of undisputed fact, people living under those systems are poorer and more likely to be subject to arbitrary detention or execution than the typical citizens of the world's democratic countries. A good civic education will teach that because it is a fact. A bad civic education will use propaganda to conceal facts like those.
    - antifa 4y ago
      This reply is a perfect example of the "overstate/understate" propoganda in action. Really? The United States didn't commit mass murder? Read a history book. Can you imagine school children in China, one of them asks in a political science class "What's wrong with US democracy?" and nobody can give them an answer without first mentioning the genocide of native americans, the mass graves in latin american, the contras, Iraq.
      - safety1st 4y ago
        There really is no comparison unless your goal is to make China look good by distorting the facts. The highest estimate I've seen for deaths on the Trail of Tears is 15K. Iraq was perhaps 100K-200K. The Chinese killed some 75,000,000 people (mostly their own) in the 20th century. Plus, why did you make this about the US? Have you forgotten that other democracies exist? I was talking about the human rights track records of democracies in general versus authoritarian governments in general. Democracies consistently have better records. You're the one who decided to cherry pick one of the worse democracies (and still failed to demonstrate that it is as bad as one of the worst authoritarian states).

wongarsu 4y ago

> The industry does not want you [...] creating Twitter, Instagram and TikTok would like to differ. User created content is still a major thing, even if we stopped calling it web 2.0. Most of that just happens in other domains than programming (though Roblox exists, so programming does happen too).

arrosenberg 4y ago
Not sure that's true considering all 3 of those platforms make their money through advertising. Like, yeah users are making content, but that's hardly the point.
- hikawaii 4y ago
  They make their money selling ads against product that they are incapable of creating, because aren't CallMeKhris or Linus or whoever.
pdntspa 4y ago
Only because they get to monetize the consumption of your content. In fact it is you who is building their product for them. Way cheaper than hiring writers or a video production team!
hammyhavoc 4y ago
There's a world of difference in the creativity that goes into a photo of lunch or a selfie versus producing something of substance.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
Poor, sweet summer child. Their exploitation of your effort isn't creative freedom. For a poignant dramatization see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits and then when you feel like reading a lot of sad history just start reading books and articles about the recording industry.
- wongarsu 4y ago

mixmastamyk 4y ago

I do remember that Apple keynotes always bragged early about how many CCs they had on file. Would rephrase as the desire to keep you dependent is a result of the control and cashflow they desire. But yeah, we called TV the idiot box for similar reasons.

rocket_surgeron 4y ago

> The industry does not want you programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few and smartphone OS developers would never in a million years promote learning how to program on their devices. From my end it looks like the opposite of all of that is happening. I went to a school in "THE GOLDEN AGE" of 8-bit micros and I was the only one out of 1,100 who used the single room of Apple IIs to type in BASIC programs. My daughters went to a school that has classes on programming, including Android development. Turbo Pascal used to be so expensive I couldn't afford it. Android studio is $0.00 and the (free) resources for development that apple and google openly distribute make many of my college classes look pathetic.

dTal 4y ago
>For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few In a way, they are. They are gatekept in a way that is transparent to you because you find yourself on the correct side of the gate. Apple's gatekeeping is overt, while Google's is more covert: 1) They require a desktop computer - a powerful one at that. Apple requires a Mac. It would be trivial to release an app builder that ran on the phone, but they don't. Apple even outright forbids such apps, or any kind of interpreted environment. Apple also forbids installing things on stock iPhones without passing through Apple servers, and they require you to pay $99 and be over 18 for that privilege. This completely kneecaps the development of any kind of "demoscene". 2) They are ridiculously baroque. I mean awful. Look at this[0] Hello World - "the simplest Android app". Note the wall of perplexing XML, and complex directory tree. Note the phrase "You don't need to understand this code fully." This is not irreducible complexity, this is the result of an attitude that the only people who should be developing apps are professionals with a lot of experience and patience. There is 0 room for casual exploration in the app ecosystem. Hell, I enjoy programming, I can knock up a fun demo in LOVE in under a minute, I carry a smartphone everywhere, and yet I've never written a smartphone app. Not once. It's too much of a pain. You wrote BASIC programs for fun in school? So did I, on my calculator, at a rate of maybe 1 a day. Show me the kid who writes smartphone apps like that. [0] https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-simplest-android-app-hello-world--cms-35175 https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-simplest-android-app...