What combats enshittification is the commons itself. That is: if you can download a car, car manufacturers can't be rentiers. The commons isn't the same as "open", because it's about the norms, not the artifacts.
And sufficiently complex rentier schemes eventually collapse to the commons, because they resemble Ponzis: they get into the business of enslaving their neighbors because that keeps the scheme going. That's why historical empires have a definite lifespan to them.
What we've been going through with rapid progress in computing and networking is a series of these schemes, which have been the basis of "tech" as a distinct industry - IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. At this point everyone is in on the game and looking for ways to make "smart" devices.
But what ordinary people are doing in response is a kind of turtling of their behavior: doing fewer things that are more aligned with the commons that remains. The pandemic lockdown experience saw a wave of this, with a lot of preference shifts that reverberated through the supply chain.
And so I see a vibrant "future of tech" existing in terms of defining robust commons spaces with norms that resist an entity coming in and saying "let me help you with that". It's just the nature of things that rentiers can always deploy an army of mercenaries to claim the space first, and then the commons gradually catches up by being more survivable in turmoil.
The author nails so many points, it's a bit overwhelming.
The war on general computing seems to be the common underlying culprit, but how can this exploit ever be mitigated? The average person just wants "iPhone", and the subject of purchased hardware not serving them is even something they are interested in discussing or bothering trying to understand.
Computers are sneaky because what a computer is really up to can be made opaque to the end user.
Remember that experiment a few months back that made the computer beep everytime the web browser sent telemetry?
The average person wants a secure device that just works. It’s very easy to maintain an iPhone that doesn’t have malware that can steal your banking auth token. It’s borderline impossible to do this on Windows. Since basically anything you run has full permission to read anything.
You can run a game on iOS and know for sure your other apps are safe. Do the same on windows and it installs a kernel module to monitor everything to make sure you aren’t cheating.
> The average person wants a secure device that just works.
I mean, I consider myself a tech person and I also want this for my everyday stuff. I love playing with gadgets and operating systems whenever I have extra time, but I do not want to troubleshoot wifi driver issues or reboot a crashed/bugging window manager when I'm in a rush to check the bus schedule on my phone.
I've been using various Linux operating systems on all my computers for almost two decades, but lately I've been thinking more and more if my next laptop should be a Mac just because I have less and less time to maintain and fix the machines. I want something that just works and I would pay good money to get a fully open and not enshittified phone or laptop, but they don't seem to exist.
> You can run a game on iOS and know for sure your other apps are safe. Do the same on windows and it installs a kernel module to monitor everything to make sure you aren’t cheating.
I agree that Windows needs a better system for the user to restrict the permissions of an application. On the other hand: many AAA video games are known to use such a practice, and in such a situation, the typical gamer would rather allow the installation of such a kernel module instead of boycotting the game, as would be much more rational.
Actually enforced regulation. GDPR, right to repair, stricter laws around advertising, forced interoperability, enforcement of existing laws against malware/spyware.
Man, at this point, I just want a shitty old car that I can fix everything myself without tons of computer stuff in them. But there's always the issue of parts availability.
Anyone know of a dumb(ish) car that is user repairable with decently easy to find replacement parts?
Toyotas and Subarus circa 2003-2007 and tend to be pretty dumb and easy to repair compared to the cars being produced today.
But they're getting old, and safety systems in newer cars have come a long ways. Even I am considering picking up a Rivian or Bolt to get access to better safety systems.
Yeah, that is a significant problem. Wear and tear on the main chassis (is that what it's called?) of the car also isn't making it much safer as time goes on.
Though, I suppose there's also fuel efficiency to consider as well.
90s cars are just as efficient as new ones (neglecting hybrids). They have port-injected engines that run hot, lean, and efficient. They don't suffer from carbon buildup. They don't make nanoparticulate soot. But they do make more NOx, and NOx is what emissions regulations measure.
90s cars are also lighter, which again contributes to efficiency. Since then, cars have become heavier and gotten bigger blindspots in response to crash testing and the existence of SUVs.
In fact, merely talking about fuel economy, in a society that now mostly drives SUVs and oversized pickups, has become an absurd thing. We end up fretting about marginal issues while the primary trends thunder towards oblivion.
That would be nice yeah, but considering how complex they are, I feel they'd need to be built from common parts and a user-configurable operating system or something. But I doubt that'll happen. The closest thing I've seen is JerryRigEverything's EV Humvee project: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0vZL9uwyfOFezIOiBjkdW3TT...
I see large-screen televisions for so little money - because you can't turn off the data collection. People don't want to pay more, let alone 3x for something with privacy.
And the people who sell system with privacy, they can take it all away with an update. silently.
For example, https://puri.sm sells phones that are linux-based, but they have to charge a lot and the experience is sub-par.
I think there's a market for it, but I don't know if it can catch up with the steep drop in "price" for goods where the true costs are hidden.
When thinking about how people are missing the knobs in cars, I'm left wondering if focus groups and market research is still relevant in todays world or maybe the market research groups misunderstood what the consumer meant when they heard people say, they wanted to get rid of "nobs in cars"?
Volvo and Saab went to great efforts in the 80's to ensure the controls on their cars were suitable, so volvo had buttons that were big enough and tactile enough for people wearing winter gloves so that a gloved finger didnt accidentally push a neighbouring button and they werent left with any doubt about the button being on or off.
Couldnt do that today with some cars, which is perhaps why UK police are fining people for wearing big winter coats and clothing in their cars, the police feel the car heating systems are better than someone's home so they dont need to be dressed for a hike through a winter snow scene when driving to the shops.
And sufficiently complex rentier schemes eventually collapse to the commons, because they resemble Ponzis: they get into the business of enslaving their neighbors because that keeps the scheme going. That's why historical empires have a definite lifespan to them.
What we've been going through with rapid progress in computing and networking is a series of these schemes, which have been the basis of "tech" as a distinct industry - IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. At this point everyone is in on the game and looking for ways to make "smart" devices.
But what ordinary people are doing in response is a kind of turtling of their behavior: doing fewer things that are more aligned with the commons that remains. The pandemic lockdown experience saw a wave of this, with a lot of preference shifts that reverberated through the supply chain.
And so I see a vibrant "future of tech" existing in terms of defining robust commons spaces with norms that resist an entity coming in and saying "let me help you with that". It's just the nature of things that rentiers can always deploy an army of mercenaries to claim the space first, and then the commons gradually catches up by being more survivable in turmoil.