Can you explain how this relates to hackers being the new Luddites? I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet but I can’t see how it’s description or yours relates to the title.
I identify as a 'hacker' in the 2600/Phrack tradition, and I definitely feel like a luddite rejecting the centralization of control as everything moves into the cloud, and proliferation of anti-consumer software that disempowers. Linux and BSD are beginning to feel like the last bastions of true user freedom, and the only remaining place that I have any control over my destiny as a user (and creator) of software.
DRM, app stores, subscription models, SaaS... I would burn all of these things to ground if I could
Grew up reading Phrack too. Work as pentester these days. I understand code deeply, and have tried my hand at everything from memory corruption exploits to javascript SPA apps.
I hate technology more and more. It's moving in the wrong direction. Almost everything technological seems to be used to increase control over individuals, extract money, track or predict.
No company can seem to withstand the lure and the power that comes from controlling, analyzing and aggressively tracking users.
Every traditional device that works just fine, now only has 'smart' alternatives available. The only value-add for the consumer appears to be that I can use my smartphone as the thermostat remote. The value for the energy company seems to be to better predict when to raise prices and bill & track me.
Not a pentester but a code monkey. Here is what worries me.
As we get tracked more, algorithms will start making better predictions about us. The negative side of this is that you will get offered ads that are specifically tailored to your interests, at the time you are most likely to buy at a price point you can afford. Essentially you will get controlled and primed by machines to consume, feel certain ways, agree with certain sentiments etc. That's not the kind of dystopia I want to be in.
>The negative side of this is that you will get offered ads that are specifically tailored to your interests, at the time you are most likely to buy at a price point you can afford.
To me the current system doesn't seem all that different. It's more crude, but it's already trying to do that. So I think we both have been in this dystopia for some time now.
I don't see a problem though. Consumption of ads is a free choice. People have made the choice of wanting to be manipulated for thousands of years (religion or patriotism are common examples).
I removed all ads from my household nearly two decades ago. Anyone that doesn't do that, doesn't object to the manipulation. Everyone knows what ads are for, what they do. It's not like it's a secret. A lot of people just don't mind being manipulated. And changing that I suspect is impossible.
Software that's built with money, keeps making design decisions that increase profit.
Software that's built ambivalent to money, makes other design decisions.
Most software is built with money.
The only thing that feels like it will fix this is a software/hardware bill of rights. E.g. right to repair, right to source, etc. Otherwise, things will get more exploitive, as products get cheaper.
Too right. It's just evolution really, survival of the fittest.
Software that can afford to have 100 developers work on it will, on average, out-compete software that is sustained by 50 developers.
Software (note: not necessarily _good_ software, this could also be the shittiest software with a nice lock-in) that is good at making money, can afford more developers, lawyers and lobbyists.
It's nothing new under the sun, but it does suck in a major way.
Right to source sounds strong, but I am curious about how a right to source for software that's no longer produced would work. This could be very beneficial to society, and perceivably speed up progress quite a bit.
If there is one thing I have learnt about the populace at large is they don't pay much attention to private et el issues but when it affects enough of them they change the law in their favour. Companies get plenty of years even decades to exploit but eventually the mainstream is impacted enough that regulation gets brought down in massive heavy handed ways and often not in a good way. Privacy via GDPR and the "cookie law" before it are examples of the mainstream waking up to problems that impacted them. Get too popular and exploit too much and the mainstream will do something about.
There are movements for taking data entirely away from these companies, movements for repair and a host of other things. Eventually they will more than likely become mainstream and big tech is going to find itself on the end of a lot of regulation especially in the EU. There is no way they show self control before the point where DRM, gambling and engagement mechanics are involved they are simply too profitable.
Frankly, any discussion about this invariably becomes a critique of capitalism. If you further generalize “software” to “organization”, your examples would include the various decisions companies make to increase profit: polluting, exploiting their workers, etc. At some point, we just have to acknowledge that a free market simply does not work.
Denial of root/admin access too.
Android - You are forced to void warranty, and try risky stuff. Once you are rooted, you have to play hide-and-seek with banking apps.
Windows - You can login as admin, but unless you NSudo, you cannot stop certain services.
I agree with you on most things, but I don't quite see it as being a Luddite. I see it as the continued divergence of the closed-source software world and the real world, the former turning into an endless treadmill of forced change sold as upgrades and massive amounts of tracking and the latter being the only world where it's possible to have enough control over your tools to get anything of consequence done. My point is, the real world isn't standing still, and I don't want it to, whereas a Luddite would.
I suppose you can call me a Luddite when the fashionable closed-source hardware/software companies declare that keyboards are now obsolete and demand everyone use touchscreens or voice.
Hackers in the classical sense don't like being part of an authoritarian structure.
What do you do when the technological world that you may have had a hand in creating turns on you, when technology and computing becomes an enslavement rather than a liberation? It makes sense for hackers to then find freedom without technology.
I'm a Luddite and a luddite. There's a distinction that folks fail to make: in my jargon, a Luddite opposes the automation of labor without a plan to support the displaced laborers (as the followers of Ludd), and a luddite opposes the use of technology (a perverse interpretation of Ludd as an opponent of technology)
I automate all kinds of stuff for my job, of course; I'm a cyborg and my brain works better when I can offload processing to a CPU. When I make design decisions that impact laborers at my company, that's something I think a lot about -- if it can make their job less harmful (in terms of RSI, etc), that's great; if I'm going to put somebody out of work, I'll reconsider telling my boss about an option I see.
But lots of tech is totally out of my control. IOT bugs the hell out of me, especially with everything phoning home. I hate that people willingly allow google, amazon, apple, tesla and onstar to straight up listen to every word that's said in their house/car. Hell, I don't even like cars made after the 80s.
When I grew up, there were people who reliably knew how everything in the pedestrian world worked, and could generally be counted on to fix anything that broke (except perhaps RF electronics, people specialize in that because big caps go brrr). But today, pretty much everything is unfixable; even furniture is mostly ikea or (somehow) lesser-quality pressboard crap.
So to me, saying that hackers are the new luddites is a statement about control. We want to own the objects we buy. We want to hack them, fix them, repurpose them. I'm in a relative minority on the labor theory thing
> I'm a Luddite and a luddite. There's a distinction that folks fail to make: in my jargon, a Luddite opposes the automation of labor without a plan to support the displaced laborers (as the followers of Ludd)
Being aware of the effects of automation seems wise. My problem with Ludditism as a philosophy is that it seems to focus anger on the businesses that created the jobs in the first place rather than focusing energy on the government (ie, the people) making more jobs.
Why does offering someone something become a promise to keep doing so?
> the seeds of this resistance are already present in the neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology
I actually don't agree that using the dark web is using older technology (but I can see why using the postal system to deliver contraband to households would be old tech). Tor is relatively recent tech that people can use. I think what the writer means is that hackers usually try to avoid prosecution by encrypting literally everything they do (an old cypherpunk tactic), so when they eventually get vanned by a LEA they have nothing to hand over for evidence.
How this is being a Luddite though is questionable. There is a disconnect there.
DRM, app stores, subscription models, SaaS... I would burn all of these things to ground if I could