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The only way that the ever-growing risks inherent in being dependent on centralized platforms will ever be addressed is for "non tech people" to start learning

by Gormo 2y ago

The only way that the ever-growing risks inherent in being dependent on centralized platforms will ever be addressed is for "non tech people" to start learning about tech. There is no way to reconcile "I want to trust other people to do things I don't understand but are critically important to me" with "I don't want to allow third parties to have control over things that are critically important to me. You can neither do it yourself nor hold your fiduciaries accountable without having at least a foundational understanding of how things actually work.

jimmydoe 2y ago
. The society is holding together by some level of trust others. Over emphasize individual self dependence is not helpful IMO. But instead of trust the big platform, we can go back trust people near you in the real world. As the more technical person in a small community, we all holds responsibility to help out.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > The society is holding together by some level of trust others. Over emphasize individual self dependence is not helpful IMO. The maintenance of social trust is entirely conditional on the ease with which people can revoke it or transfer it to others. The ability to exercise the right of exit is the primary thing that mitigates fiduciary risk and allows trust between individuals to be established. Society is a network of relations among individuals, and it only exists as a consequence of people exercising individual autonomy. People having the means to do things for themselves in a pinch is precisely what enables them to trust others without fear of being abused.
k310 2y ago
Having been involved with personal computing from its inception, I believe that companies made computers difficult to use for whatever reasons, be they catering to “power users”, business or just plain inattention to the non-techie user. Apple was better in this respect, but in recent times, has vast mysteries. I have written up how to save tabs in ios Safari and (this is real good) how to convert a webp file to jpg or png on ios. It’s frickin baroque. (Vastly easier on a mac) But I digress. Centralized web apps allowed people in essence to create web pages (without SeaMonkey). Apple had the key to hypertext with HyperCard and dropped it. And by the way, average people were writing their own apps in HyperCard. I was writing complex scientific graphing apps for work in HyperCard, and outputting EPS files for tech pubs. I saw a simplified computer “for old folks” and can relate that when my non-tech brother got tired of reinstalling his drivers with every Windows update, switched to a Dell Linux system, packaged and supported and after some initial questions about apps to use, hasn’t asked me anything in years. It’s not that Linux is streamlined or simple. It’s just that when you install the 4 apps you use all the time, life is good. I can’t say what should have taken place, because that’s in the “woulda coulda shoulda” basket and it’s best just to move forward.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > I believe that companies made computers difficult to use for whatever reasons, be they catering to “power users”, business or just plain inattention to the non-techie user. I don't think that's quite accurate. "Power users" are simply the users who bothered to learn how computers work. Dumbing technology down to the level of people who couldn't be be so bothered is precisely what's lead to all of the centralization and abuse. It's also diminished the value of the technology itself, since simplifying user interfaces to a level that fails to express the inherent complexity of the system makes its full functionality inaccessible. Trying to make things "easy" leads to making them less powerful, less adaptable to the needs of the user, and less accessible and responsive to users who do care to learn how they work. At the end of the day, there's simply no way to attain the full value of technology without significant risk exposure if you don't put at least a little time and effort into understanding it.
  - k310 2y ago
    I remember when "power users" were the ones who wrote reviews (free publicity). The classic story is Jerry Pournelle, who started writing but became hooked on personal computers themselves, and I would read his stories of the evolving hardware and software. It became clear that vendors would feed him new products so that they could score in the articles he wrote. [0] > Along the way, he began to write, but wasn’t able to publish. “I became an aerospace engineer, not a professional writer” > “I paid Tony Pietsch to build me the best machine he could, and paid him $12,000 all told,” Pournelle noted. The computer ran a program called Electric Pencil, the first word processing program for home computers, which had been released just the year before. Pournelle later began using a program that Pietsch programmed, which offered some improvements over Electric Pencil. > Authors saw the potential immediately. “Larry Niven saw my system, loved it, and had Tony Pietsch build him two of them,” Pournelle recalled. When he later threw a party at his home, a number of other authors “saw my system and wanted one. Greg Benford got Tony to build him a copy, and several others got Tony to find them someone local to them who’d do it for them.” The race to adopt the PC was on. IIRC, he tired of becoming a computer reviewer. It was a long time ago, and old copies of Byte Magazine are online.[1] I think it was Byte. Old timers (make that microcomputer pioneers) can correct me if I remembered this poorly. [0] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/jerry-pournelle-and-personal-computer/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/jer... [1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine P.S. I was one of those power hungry types and got into Unix in a serious way around the time of the Mac Classic/Plus. The Mac won on fontography, Unix on insane productivity. I would reduce data, and write reports with data plots in a couple of days while the personal computer users took a week. grap, pic, troff.

by Gormo 2y ago

jimmydoe 2y ago

. The society is holding together by some level of trust others. Over emphasize individual self dependence is not helpful IMO. But instead of trust the big platform, we can go back trust people near you in the real world. As the more technical person in a small community, we all holds responsibility to help out.

Gormo 2y ago
> The society is holding together by some level of trust others. Over emphasize individual self dependence is not helpful IMO. The maintenance of social trust is entirely conditional on the ease with which people can revoke it or transfer it to others. The ability to exercise the right of exit is the primary thing that mitigates fiduciary risk and allows trust between individuals to be established. Society is a network of relations among individuals, and it only exists as a consequence of people exercising individual autonomy. People having the means to do things for themselves in a pinch is precisely what enables them to trust others without fear of being abused.

k310 2y ago

Having been involved with personal computing from its inception, I believe that companies made computers difficult to use for whatever reasons, be they catering to “power users”, business or just plain inattention to the non-techie user. Apple was better in this respect, but in recent times, has vast mysteries. I have written up how to save tabs in ios Safari and (this is real good) how to convert a webp file to jpg or png on ios. It’s frickin baroque. (Vastly easier on a mac) But I digress. Centralized web apps allowed people in essence to create web pages (without SeaMonkey). Apple had the key to hypertext with HyperCard and dropped it. And by the way, average people were writing their own apps in HyperCard. I was writing complex scientific graphing apps for work in HyperCard, and outputting EPS files for tech pubs. I saw a simplified computer “for old folks” and can relate that when my non-tech brother got tired of reinstalling his drivers with every Windows update, switched to a Dell Linux system, packaged and supported and after some initial questions about apps to use, hasn’t asked me anything in years. It’s not that Linux is streamlined or simple. It’s just that when you install the 4 apps you use all the time, life is good. I can’t say what should have taken place, because that’s in the “woulda coulda shoulda” basket and it’s best just to move forward.

Gormo 2y ago
> I believe that companies made computers difficult to use for whatever reasons, be they catering to “power users”, business or just plain inattention to the non-techie user. I don't think that's quite accurate. "Power users" are simply the users who bothered to learn how computers work. Dumbing technology down to the level of people who couldn't be be so bothered is precisely what's lead to all of the centralization and abuse. It's also diminished the value of the technology itself, since simplifying user interfaces to a level that fails to express the inherent complexity of the system makes its full functionality inaccessible. Trying to make things "easy" leads to making them less powerful, less adaptable to the needs of the user, and less accessible and responsive to users who do care to learn how they work. At the end of the day, there's simply no way to attain the full value of technology without significant risk exposure if you don't put at least a little time and effort into understanding it.
- k310 2y ago
  I remember when "power users" were the ones who wrote reviews (free publicity). The classic story is Jerry Pournelle, who started writing but became hooked on personal computers themselves, and I would read his stories of the evolving hardware and software. It became clear that vendors would feed him new products so that they could score in the articles he wrote. [0] > Along the way, he began to write, but wasn’t able to publish. “I became an aerospace engineer, not a professional writer” > “I paid Tony Pietsch to build me the best machine he could, and paid him $12,000 all told,” Pournelle noted. The computer ran a program called Electric Pencil, the first word processing program for home computers, which had been released just the year before. Pournelle later began using a program that Pietsch programmed, which offered some improvements over Electric Pencil. > Authors saw the potential immediately. “Larry Niven saw my system, loved it, and had Tony Pietsch build him two of them,” Pournelle recalled. When he later threw a party at his home, a number of other authors “saw my system and wanted one. Greg Benford got Tony to build him a copy, and several others got Tony to find them someone local to them who’d do it for them.” The race to adopt the PC was on. IIRC, he tired of becoming a computer reviewer. It was a long time ago, and old copies of Byte Magazine are online.[1] I think it was Byte. Old timers (make that microcomputer pioneers) can correct me if I remembered this poorly. [0] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/jerry-pournelle-and-personal-computer/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/jer... [1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine P.S. I was one of those power hungry types and got into Unix in a serious way around the time of the Mac Classic/Plus. The Mac won on fontography, Unix on insane productivity. I would reduce data, and write reports with data plots in a couple of days while the personal computer users took a week. grap, pic, troff.