Also relevant [edit:2015]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298572334_School_wi...Bunz's conclusion:
"The difference between empowering the user and manipulating her or him is
minimal, but decisive: it makes a difference whether the interface is empowering you, or patronizing you while hiding it in bright, friendly colours and
the technique of infantilization. In a conversation about this contemporary problem of interface designs, Robert Ochshorn (2014) pointed out that
there is, indeed, a fine line between ‘designing to empower a skilled user’
and ‘designing to prevent a user from feeling stupid’. This means that the
difference between the interface assuming you are intelligent and teaching
you to outgrow it, and patronizing the user by eliminating the possibility
of making mistakes while effectively controlling her or him, is difficult to
spot. Following Wendy Chun, who addresses the new media of today as
a habit, one can say that habits ‘are both inflexible and creative’ (Chun
10.1057/9781137437204 - Postdigital Aesthetics, Edited by David M. Berry and Michael Dieter200 Infantilization in Digital Environments
forthcoming 2015; Chun 2015, this volume), while Tiziana Terranova (2004,
83) has pointed out that online spaces cannot be conceived as ‘purely functional’. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Bunz 2014, 50), this is a tendency
we find often when looking at the being of technology: technology is haunted
by an ambivalence – in this case, its potential to manipulate and its potential
to empower people.
Despite infantilization looking friendly and innocent, it might follow
other interests, and, at a time in which computers are becoming ubiquitous, we need to be aware of this. Soon, infantilization might leave our
screens to be found on the things around us – Google has recently launched
a car with a smiling face. Being addressed as a child is ambivalent, and this
ambivalence is typical of our time: technology companies want people to
feel comfortable and play with their technology. At the same time, people
also need to take technology into their own hands, as learning how to use it
not only empowers them, but also shapes what technology becomes: school
will never end."
[Edit: Seems obvious companies try their best to make products that get people consuming more instead of producing more. Removing complexity from digital interfaces is a recurrent theme.]
About TFA, I believe everything has its place - open source shouldn't try to "win" and just do its thing. At the same time megacorporations devote greater and greater resources to bigger projects like the linux kernel.
This is not an indictement though... software is getting more complex and i.e. it's unthinkable now for anything but a very large company to make their own browser.
I don't know where we go from here.