As far as I can remember, this is how it’s always been though. From my first Atari consoles & computers in the early to mid 80s etc. to my first web capable PCs in the mid 90s, hardware dev pushes software dev & vice versa ultimately reacting to customer desire-need & growing a market with ever newer, faster, more powerful & capable systems.
This is a deeper, probably thought-provoking conversation for another sub-forum (which is not at all a dismissal for having that conversation).
But
how designers of systems are producing those systems presently is no longer a principal function of "how do we make everything quicker and more efficient which the latest reductions that Moore's Law can afford us
right now," and more a function of "how do we design this to implore always-on use, always-on appliance co-dependency, and involuntarily sending back that use-data
as a compulsory foundation beyond the reach of the user who generated it?"
I recall Steve Jobs envisioning the hand-held computing of the iPhone and iPad in a very different manner than how that mode of computing became what it has throughout this decade — as
de facto surveillance instruments.
I'm mindful how there is a steady but repeatable pattern of tech industry principals curtailing or altogether forbidding handheld internet access for their kids.
I'm mindful how we didn't ask for a Web 2.0 in 2002 (who remembers Friendster?) to feed our personal data to then-embryonic or nonexistent companies — which now are large enough in 2019 that antitrust talks are being brought forward by regulators and lawmakers.
Yet an insistence on "needing" a Web 2.0 (or even an IoT-oriented Web 3.0), in which user-generated content renders the user as
the product, was fuelled by a vision for a future promise of largesse confined to a handful of well-placed orchestrators (which opens
another sub-topic on social structures and barriers, but for another time), at the direct expense
and labour of virtually everyone else.
This has left us with fairly costly, yet increasingly disaposable tech [sidebar: it's worth considering the amortized costs in being unable to
upgrade versus
replace] — just as we're struggling to sequester enough carbon to mitigate a sixth extinction event already underway by our very hands.
Not sure, but I think that covers most of the bases… oh, wait, I forgot one more: the drive to consume hardware and a healthy chunk of non-renewable energy for… oh right,
generating electric money. Much as with Web 2.0, cryptocurrency principals share one vision in common: personal largesse at the expense of all others and all else.
These are the literal antithesis of a steady equilibrium for a sustainable commonwealth.
Monetizing the Internet with goods & services was only a matter of time and that as the current hammer for creating small, thin, in the palm of your hand, always connected & accessible (and most importantly CHEAP) computer devices to fasciitate this new revenue stream is the game.
The unrestricted monetizing of the internet arose from a paucity of public oversight and regulation, and the oversight which does come to pass often (though not always — yet
another discussion topic for another place and time) arrives just a step too late.
Yes, being able to buy things on the internet is as old as the internet itself (usenet was once that go-to place), but it was not designed by and for commerce over the efficient and truly
open exchange of knowledge labour — sans nation-state firewalls, paywalls, and other content barriers we've ginned up to enrich a select few folks.
I admire your faith in always-on appliances. As many folks clamour for remote control over their IoT appliances, I'm trying to find builds for my phone which strip out all the OEM code froom Google, FB, and others so that this small, thin, delicate, and, yes,
expensive device (which doesn't have any replaceable parts) functions as I want it to for my needs. When it fails (and it will), I know I'll wince — much as I winced in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2017 — to replace it with another spendy handheld I neither want nor really asked for. I miss buttons.
Maintaining economic Growth is life.
For under-regulated and unregulated capitalism, positively.
Conversely, Saying “this is enough” is engineered stagnation & that is the economic death knoll.
And, rhetorically speaking, an economic death knell for unsustainable expansion
* is bad
how and
for whom, precisely?
Anyhow, there remains tremendous utility and just enough interchangeability in the legacy tech we already have all around us, even if it's shoved into a basement or closet. And that, plus my very limited income, is why I continue to use legacy tech like PowerPC hardware for a lot of my work: because it is available reasonably cheaply, it diverts from landfill for extended use-value, and it still gets the job done for a lot of user-generated creation.
* reserving use of "growth" to living things which we as humanity had no hand in creating
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Couldn't agree more.
Well, that's why we have Links2.
Just like that, no more bloat.
This is awesome. Seriously. Sharing knowledge and information without obfuscation.
