[karllager]

I'm sorry for being short on content, but I wish, more people would really go deeper into theory and open their eyes on the things around them and realize, that capitalism is an extremely aggressive beast that has sucked up everything, that is not itself.

Three days ago, I wondered (time and again) about all the fuzz about this site called facebook - within ten years it took something, that was not really exploited (social relations) and made it a first class business. Startup hubs are still dreaming of the next social startup - meaning exploiting special kind of relations (neighbours, potential partners, coworkers, what have you).

And we won't stop here. Think your dreams belong to you? Maybe today, but I can see large enterprises exploiting your very being for profit, soon. You find that disturbing? But why?

[kristiandupont]

There are several issues to be aware of with the way society and technology is evolving for sure, but when you just shout "wake up sheeple!" and offer nothing but hand waving, you are not contributing much in that regard.

[karllager]

Yes, true. But I am not a salesman to sell you a solution.

All I ask for is to be more conscious about these, sometimes subtle, sometimes less so - things.

If it helps you, here's a simple framework of mine to develop some kind of directional feeling for technology: If it helps to lessen the power of a single entity it's perfect, if it enables you to do new things it's good, otherwise, it might only be a distraction.

Linux and free software is perfect, it is free and a huge enabler for all kinds of things - even for businesses. Bittorrent is good, because it is a huge enabler and took power off content distributors. Raspberry Pi is perfect, because it puts computing into a lot of hands. AWS is only good, because it is an enabler, but it actually feeds a single entity - so that's bad. Cryptocurrencies in theory are perfect, since they take power off single large entities - but they are not robust yet. Solar power is perfect, because it can a human make independent of a single large entity.

So, it is somewhat simple: There are things that liberate you - you as a person and let's you voluntarily choose to cooperate and there are things that lock you in - facebooks walled garden, adtech in general, where information asymmetry only grows - and many other things, that only make sense in the capitalist framework (in however shiny colors you want to paint its advantages).

Maybe that's a start?

[bloby]

Very sane reply. It is greed which is the source. To keep it simple.