5 ms·
Computing was less annoying before it became a branch of the advertising industry.
by Animats 2y ago
Computing was less annoying before it became a branch of the advertising industry.
- m463 2y agoThere were a lot of annoying detours. A lot of the bad parts of computing originated in hollywood. They wanted certainty that you could only play "protected" music or video. This sort of thing made it "necessary" to lock bootloaders and eventually with the iphone... The ship of theseus didn't belong to theseus anymore, it was just a license. now lots of devices are cash registers, surveillance devices, e-meters and pop-up generators.
- germinalphrase 2y agoDon’t forget our final and most essential technology - the slot machine.
- bigpeopleareold 2y ago... or that the marketing and sales department is the real scaffold for enabling computing for those without university access.
- chgs 2y agoI don’t remember any tracking or adverts on computers when windows 95 came out (there were adverts for computers, I used to jay money to receive them in the way if computer shopper. the first real annoyances were Spam and Punch the monkey, both parts of the advertising industry.
- genewitch 2y agoClick the link and put in the fifteenth word in the third paragraph, then click "about" and put in the fourth word in the second sentence. The good old days before cookies and trackers...
- vel0city 2y agoThe average Windows 95 machine was loaded with bundled software all asking to pay for a full license. ISPs were advertised in connection wizards built-in to the OS.
- ssivark 2y agoThis shouldn’t have been the least bit surprising — since this is what happened to every mass communication technology over the past few centuries: print, then radio, then television. The OG computing folks at Xerox PARC indeed foresaw all this, and McLuhan wrote about this in the 50s/60s.
- imiric 2y agoAdvertising is a cancer on society. It corrupts all forms of media, ever since the invention of publishing and broadcasting. The internet is its most lucrative victim yet. It's where they've taken the sociopathic ideas pioneered by Bernays to their maximum expression. It is the most powerful global psychological manipulation machine, influencing everything from what we spend our money on, to how we think and act. It is unequivocally a major cause of the sociopolitical unrest and conflicts we see today. The really insidious part is that most people don't consciously realize they're being manipulated, and are happy to exchange that for some "free" products and services. This has, of course, made many companies very rich, by operating in a dark data broker market exchanging the data we've given them, and more prominently, data they've stolen or inferred from us. To people working in these companies: you're complicit in the breakdown of society. Grow a moral backbone, quit, and boycott them.
- ghaff 2y agoForcing people to fork out money for any product or service they used also made many companies very rich. See Microsoft, Oracle... A very long list. But you're so hyperbolic and hysterical I don't even know where to begin.
- mandmandam 2y ago> you're so hyperbolic and hysterical I don't even know where to begin. No they aren't. The situation is just so absurd and extreme, yet normalized, that accurately describing it makes people sound weird. That's why Chomsky speaks in that extreme monotone, to counterbalance the very real horror and extreme nature of the things he is saying.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoHow does the belief that advertising drives major behaviour change square with 50+ years of psychological research showing that behaviour change is really difficult?
- 2y ago
- TwoNineFive 2y agoHN was also better before the advert and sales people flooded it.