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Comment by barnacs | Hacker News Reader

Great write-up. I share your disappointment. I too though technology could be the answer but it looks like tech has simply transformed to suit the needs of this centralized, capitalist, consumerist slave society. As a software engineer myself, i'm also at a loss what to do. Disillusioned with the direction tech is taking, yet refusing to give up my values I've considered trying my hands at politics or writing. But often I feel like the doctrines are so deeply entrenched that some huge catastrophe is the only thing that could turn society around.

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Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist?

The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook.

Yes, interesting initiatives do exist! Still, "making a living" contributing to them is hard. But there are also coops exploring how to build non-alienating organizations... (I can thing of Igalia, I don't work for them but I keep it as inspiration for when/if I want to start a coop: http://igalia.com/)

There are some sparks of hope. And I am very thankful to all those that light them up.

But when most people do the other way around and it is sometimes hard not to indulge into a bit of self-doubt and think: am I maybe the crazy one?

> Why not get involved with any of the thriving, vivid, fascinating projects that work in ways that are decentralized, noncapitalist, and nonconsumerist?

There are indeed some great projects and I also have some ideas myself and I do try to work on them every now and then but like I said, I've come to believe that the root of the problem is not the lack of "better" technology. I think no amount of coding will fix the problems I perceive. It's the other way around; once the issues are fixed, society will make better use of technology.

> The picture of the world as a "slave society" is polarized, exaggerated, and paralyzing. We aren't slaves just because most of your friends use Facebook.

It's not just facebook. Our technological landscape is simply a reflection of the misguided values our society holds. It's the lack of critical thinking, the drive for individual gain as opposed to cooperation, unjustified social hierarchies, the daily struggle of survival through wage labour, the concentration of power, etc AND the heavy propaganda fueling it all. You can't just code a way out of this, people have tried and failed.

Yes, that sums it up very well... Doing "good technology" can helps up feel better about our profession (and this is fine) but adding more tech to the problem is not going to help.

On the other hand, while doing tech we are building organizations and interactions between people. We can explore new forms of cooperative non hierarchical organization. Building coops and companies that enable people to survive without having to choose to eat or be eaten, and setting up examples that can inspire new forms of organizing other parts of society. This is something that motivates me lately.

I recently read Reinventing Organizations by Laloux, and although the book is very flawed philosofically, I like how it talks about alienation without even mentioning the word, with lots of examples that people without a political activist background can relate to. It also reminds me of the Anarchist Moral by Kropotkin, which more than a century before tried to show optimism by looking at all the emerging cooperative structures in our society that too often go ignored.

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