as someone who learned to program computers in the late 70s and early 80s on an Apple ][+ computer, it has been EXTREMELY frustrating to watch the direction that personal computing has been taking for the last 20 years: towards more and more centralization and control. gmail is free, but at what cost do we move towards a paradigm that puts a corporation in control of our personal communications. i saw some of the potential destructive power of this in the early 00s when a politically subversive writing group that i was a member of was "unplugged" from the net by yahoo without so much as a notice or apology of any kind. no response from the company and nowhere to appeal the decision. pointing and clicking our way towards totalitarianism and technocratic hegemony. DANGER!!!
as someone who learned to program computers in the late 70s and early 80s on an Apple ][+ computer, it has been EXTREMELY frustrating to watch the direction that personal computing has been taking for the last 20 years: towards more and more centralization and control. gmail is free, but at what cost do we move towards a paradigm that puts a corporation in control of our personal communications. i saw some of the potential destructive power of this in the early 00s when a politically subversive writing group that i was a member of was "unplugged" from the net by yahoo without so much as a notice or apology of any kind. no response from the company and nowhere to appeal the decision. pointing and clicking our way towards totalitarianism and technocratic hegemony. DANGER!!!
ReplyDelete