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by karllager 3187 days ago
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?

1 comments

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