It was all downhill after the Cuecat

>But in a world of Felony Contempt of Business Model, that discussion changes to "Given that we can literally imprison anyone who helps our users get more out of this product, how can we punish users who are disloyal enough to simply quit our service or switch away from our product?"

>That is, "how can we raise the switching costs of our products so that users who are angry at us keep using our products?"

I keep telling myself that the reason interoperability disappeared is because software updates and platforms are just fast-moving targets, and we don't have the relative stability computers had 25 years ago. But I know that's not true, and it's really the other way around.

Thanks @doctorow

Look, we created it because barcodes had URLs below them on packaged goods that were generic. Google had a fresh “links in” algorithm that they were figuring out. We had the first concept of location or demographic based results for media and products.

Your :CC ID was used to see who the best distribution channels were. The software ID held your profile and zip code so someone swiping a Coke can in Dallas would see a Six Flags promotion, someone in Atlanta would get SeaWorld + Coke offers.

The light DMCA approved ROT 64 output scrambling was to prevent OS or browsers from natively decoding the scans, as we wanted to run the ONS (object naming service) and provide truly valuable links. How many QR codes go to 404 links today? Our magic from 1997 was dynamic in multiple ways.

Alas, the USB and portable devices shipped as the dot-bomb era encroached and our open plug-in framework gets forgotten by the researchers.

I’m proud of what the 300+ team built over those handful of formative commercial Internet years, and happy to see our creation in the Computer History Museum. Under oddity input devices.

Like all cheap 1-d barcode readers it did a terrible job of reading either kind of barcode.

What's really remarkable about QR codes is that they read reliably with a cheap camera, which just isn't true about UPC barcodes either using a camera or using a wedge reader. You need a really expensive reader with a laser and a spinning mirror if you want reading UPC bar codes to be less than several times slower than typing in the numbers.

One day word came down that we had to destroy all remaining inventory. Those things were nearly indestructible. Ran one over with a car multiple times and it was fine. Eventually everyone interested just took them home.

From my perspective the real decline came from canceling of the catalog.

We had so many people coming in asking for it. Only to be told to use the kiosk in store or the website.

That catalog was basically our training manual. We got to know our inventory from it. People always walked in and showed us what they wanted. That all dried up.

Then we became just a phone shop. In my region I was the highest selling agent of parts , batteries and accessories. That stuff was pure profit. Yet, I was constantly in trouble for not selling enough phones.

They did not care one bit about anything else.

They had a glut of engineers after the dot com crash, wish is how I ended up their.

This is me. I used to be fascinated by new technology, to imagine the ways it could make life better for everyone. Today, I’m worried about how to limit its destructiveness. There’s no joy any more.

I know it’s not the technology itself but how we use it. In practical terms this doesn’t make a difference though.

> There’s no longer anything being promised to us by tech companies that we actually need or asked for.

The way to fight back is to decline to interact with, use, or especially pay for anything that actively works against your freedom. In other words, stop hurting yourself! (and paying for the privilege of doing so)

It's easy to spot many of them: they have "smart" in the name. Some of them even have euphemistic names like "Telephone" (which is supposed to be a passive instrument) when they are really deliberately-crippled computers.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/09/12/wasting-money-on-c...

Good previous thread here (including the :CC founder's link to Oak Island!):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328093

I disagree entirely. I think the generational change in core philosophies is exactly the problem.

I perceive three generations in the world of hackers.

The first generation were Engineers. Their outlook was academic; they wrote RFCs and built consensus. Their outlook was intellectual; they were mainly interested in solving hard mathematical and algorithmic problems like figuring out how compilers and encryption and decentralized network addressing should work. Their audience was other academics interested in computers for academic purposes, and sometimes corporations and governments. Their work was Important. They did the Cold War. They did the Space Race. They worked for the man and they believed in it; they believed that was how we would build great treasures to leave to mankind. They were idealists. They built infrastructure. They built wonders. They put a man on the moon.

The second generation were Revolutionaries. Computers became more accessible, and a thousand revolutions happened overnight. Some revolutionaries sought to break corporate power and give it to the people. Some saw a gold rush. Their outlook was explorational and competitive -- market dominance by outperforming, by seeking new horizons, by doing what had never been done before. Their outlook was revolutionary -- the cyberpunk ethos, the belief that information wants to be free, belong to this generation. They were mainly interested in changing the world. Their audience was hobbyists and the youth and the more technically inclined of the general public. They hated the man, and tried to bring him down. They tried to empower and enrich humanity. They built products and applications and tools.

The third generation are Barons. As it became obvious to everyone that computers could make you rich and powerful, people started getting into them for that reason. Their outlook was machiavellian, as described in this article. They are mainly interested in power and money, in building kingdoms. Their outlook is contemptuous. Their audience are the technically illiterate masses, which they perceive as theirs to exploit. They are trying to get rich. They intend to be the man, and they largely succeed. (And now that they have succeeded so well, they're finding that ruling the world is not as easy or fun as they had imagined.) They build Technological Ecosystems.

RMS stands at the cusp between the first and second generation, and was popular during the transition, and did a lot to give the second generation its voice. HN stands at the cusp between the second and third generation, and is very much a product of that time (and I mean that in the very best way -- it was a time when the corruption of the third generation was becoming obvious, and people hated it, and bless them they still thought they could outcompete it, because the excitement and idealism of the second generation hadn't died yet).

The Engineers built email. The Revolutionaries built PGP. The Barons built GMail. The Engineers built IP. The Revolutionaries built TOR. The Barons built Twitter. The Engineers made usenet for themselves. The Revolutionaries made PHPBB. The Barons made Reddit and StackOverflow. The Engineers made Unix. The Revolutionaries made Linux. The Barons made smartphones.

Nothing stops you from being an Engineer today. Or a Revolutionary. We still have some of them. But the dominant tools of this generation very much reflect the dominant philosophy of this generation, and complaining that it hurts you -- that it hurts everyone! -- will not do very much to fix it.

Laws are helpful, but are fundamentally not the problem. A law here and there helps a bit, but what matters is that things are built by people who aim to exploit. They will find a way. And even if they don't succeed on you, that is the sort of thing they are building because that is the sort of thing they think they are supposed to be building.

They didn't make Wikipedia because a law compelled them to. Or Linux. They made those things because they were Revolutionaries, and that sort of thing was what you did at that time. People make startups now, and go on Shark Tank or whatever, because that is what you do. You can't law people into building like a revolutionary; you need an army of sincere revolutionaries for that.

Will the awfulness of this generation capture the imagination of the world and cause a backlash? I don't know. I'm squarely first-to-second generation myself, in philosophy and association if not by age, and I'm not holding my breath; just hoping the population of my little island is somewhat self-sustaining enough to make interesting things in its little niche.

There was a much-better device that came later, the Hiku. It wasn't free, but it was basically a WiFi-enabled battery-powered barcode scanner designed to manage your shopping. You'd scan the barcodes of items as you tossed them, and it would automatically add them to your shopping list. The hardware was way ahead of its time, even now something with those capabilities would cost something like $500 from Symbol. It even had a microphone so you could just record stuff to add to the list if it didn't have barcodes.

Even after the company folded and the backend was shut down, turning the reader into a doorstop, the app still worked for several more years, and I kept using it for shopping lists because it synced in real-time as my wife added items to the list while I was shopping and ticking them off.

i think this was like 1992 or so, long before the cuecat.

It would have been better if the author stuck strictly to tenable claims, since veering into amateur political agitation is usually the last resort of writers without substantial prospects elsewhere.

e.g.

>" The problem is when you can't choose someone else – when leaving a platform involves high switching costs, whether that's having to replace hardware, buy new media, or say goodbye to your friends, customers, community or family."

Here the author tries to turns a mundane observation, that switching costs are high when you put your entire life on a single platform, into an emotive and attention grabbing claim.

> "That's why plans to impose interoperability on tech giants are so exciting – because the problem with Facebook isn't "the people I want to speak to are all gathered in one convenient place," no more than the problem with app stores is "these companies generally have good judgment about which apps I want to use. The problem is that when those companies don't have your back, you have to pay a blisteringly high price to leave their walled gardens. That's where interop comes in. Think of how an interoperable Facebook could let you leave behind Zuckerberg's dominion without forswearing access to the people who matter to you"

Here the author alleges Zuck to be ruling a vast dominion of billions of Facebook users. And the fabled 'interop' shall grant users the magic key for passage through the most expedient gates into the land of unbounded freedom outside.

In reality Facebook usage is already declining in North America, and no magic keys are necessary for people to just leave and delete their accounts.

The idea of interop may be valuable yet this phrasing and casting of the folks at Facebook as arch-demons and feudal lords will more likely retard rather than promote the prospects of its integration.