The basic gist is that software is eating people's jobs, and everything has to be an /app/ these days or it's not credible.
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
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.
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.
Of all the options, a free market with regulation to internalize social externalities seems the optimal solution.
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.
Either the entity that sold you the software (or their successors) gives you standard access, tools, and specs to effect standard repairs.
Or if that entity cannot fulfill that responsibility (say, because they went bankrupt), their code is open-sourced.
The situation to avoid is "nobody cares about this thing, and nobody is available to service it."
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.
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.
This is already happening, Facebook has done experiments about user emotions. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Youtube is using machine learning algorithms for suggesting videos https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
There is nothing to stop a company from manipulating user emotions enough to guide you down the path of buying a product.
Screwing with my emotions is my #1 beef with tech today. Even more than the freedom thing.
Friends of mine that jealously guard and maintain their emotional state seem to have issued a blanket exception for tech.
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.
Thanks for looking out for me, Google.
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.
Write your own operating system specific to hardware.
It’s either have the monolith for all or make it a black box so you’re special.
Personally I’d rather the resources be made available to all and not just cellar dweller squirrelly types.
What you have is a political problem: we optimize to reduce fiscal costs to protect aristocratic power.
If everyone wants to be highly atomic agents of self management, stop working for money.
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 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
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?