Purism is doing great work, but to me everything in that list comes second to the assurance that my technology purchase isn’t subsidized by underprivileged people’s suffering, as is the case with most un-vetted producers of digital hardware in China and most of Asia. If we’re gonna talk about crucial market corrections, this has to be #1 on the list.
Any digital hardware manufacturer who wants to be part of the solution should be entering into a partnership with Fairphone to set their supply chain straight. I’ll start caring about the openness of my phone once you can assure me that the production of it was cruelty-free.
That's a very good point, and puts things in perspective.
Buying an ethically sourced computer does more for freedom than buying a computer with zero proprietary software or firmware. As things stand, it's possible, but severely constraining, to insist on a laptop that has no proprietary software. [0] As far as I know, it's not possible to buy an ethically sourced laptop.
Open systems are important to distribute knowledge and ideas to future generations without enslaving them to certain ecosystems and it would especially enable developing markets where access to education is more difficult.
Still, you are correct, it is possible to have safe and healthy working conditions without a problem. I just think there is no conflict if we try to achieve both.
Yep. Rather than being mutually exclusive, the two ideals are in fact highly complementary. That’s why a collaboration between Fairphone and Purism would be an exceedingly beautiful thing, as they’ve made compromises on opposite ends.
> What people desire from technology is well documented and can be summed up with a series of buzzwords. The difficulty isn’t knowing what society wants, it is knowing the path to get there.
> What do we want from our technology?
> We want the right to change providers.
> We want the right to protect personal data.
> We want the right to verify.
> We want the right to not be tracked.
> We want the right to access.
It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this.
People _could_ use PGP. They _could_ use strong passwords. They _could_ move to defederated social networks. They _could_ lobby their congressional representatives to break up Apple because their walled garden is a vertical monopoly that harms consumers.*
They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people".
I don't follow these types of arguments that the market is an true indicator of what people actually desire. If you ask anyone on the street if they would like any of these things out of technology they would unanimously say yes. But I agree it is not worth the trade-offs to actually fight for these things for most people. It doesn't mean these things are not desired, it is just that other things are desired more.
Also, why do you put the word people in quotations? Just because most aren't interested in pursuing technological freedoms doesn't make them less of a people.
The world makes more sense when you learn that what people say and what they do are almost never the same. This is why markets and other analysis of behavior are greater predictors than polls or surveys or esp anecdotes
Its more complex than that. People aren't given a choice of "This is the pixel phone with spyware and this is the pixel phone without spyware, they cost the same and are functionally identical"
They are shown a pixel and nothing is said of privacy, and then if they know to dig deeper and find an option with more privacy but much more expensive and lacking massive amounts of features.
In some cases its impossible to avoid a trade-off. A bigger battery will result in a bigger phone so people who say the would buy a bigger battery phone end up not doing that. But for privacy, there doesn't have to be a trade off.
Why do you think what people do is a better indication of what they want as oppose to what they say they want?
For example, some addict wants to quit, but continue to abuse.
I think a lot of modern tech is designed to make us addicts. So it's pretty apt example. And of course, using the market as the only indication of what people want is creating incentives that optimize for addiction.
But revealed choice isn't a true indication of preference if the options to choose from don't allow for expression of preference. The market isn't some neutral A/B test because the seller is incentivized to manipulate A and B.
It's more of a market game situation, where buyer choice says as much about seller preference as it does buyer preference at some level.
I am not on the street and no one asked me, but things have tradeoffs.
Do I want the right to change providers, verify, and so on? Sure. Do I want them at any cost? No.
I could get a lot of those things today, right now if I was willing to switch to a linux desktop and PureOS phone. I have tried switching to linux many times and and can say with certainty that I am willing to trade quite a bit to be able to use macOS instead of ubuntu, fedora, etc...While I haven't tried PureOS specifically, I did have an Android phone for a while and much prefer iOS.
oh I put it in quotations because I was quoting the word the author used. I didn't mean it as "these so-called 'people'", but reading it back I can see how it could read that way.
To your first point, I think what people buy does have a reasonable correlation with what they want when there are other options. Taking the costs into account is of course part of the calculation. "They desire it but only if it is free and without any trade-offs whatsoever" isn't a very useful definition of "want".
Caveat: this only works when people can have/do what they really want. Ex. In a world where 99% of people haven't even heard of a smartphone that doesn't use Android or iOS, you can't tell if people value things that neither platform provides.
'Desires' taken out of context are also not very meaningful (e.g. "if money were no object.." type speculations). Cost, particularly relative to means, being a prime example of such context.
> It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this.
Of course, people can only buy what the market provides — and the market will exclusively (or at least disproportionately) provide the most profitable things. So market behavior isn't necessarily the best proxy for people's preferences in aggregate.
This is what I find so ironic about the market as revealed choice argument. This whole discussion is happening in the shadow of the M1 systems and Apple's increasingly controllling behavior. It's not as if Apple is offering an unlocked version of an M1 laptop alongside the locked version.
This gets even more tricky in discussing other things, like messaging, that have network effects. There it's not just what's offered, and my preference, that matters, but also other people's past options and choices.
I didn't realize how awful PGP's usability was until I tried to get a server admin with a technical diploma to use it. This guy sets up and maintains servers for a living. He should be able to figure PGP out fairly quickly, shouldn't he? Boy, was I wrong!
The case can be made that people care about the the things in this arcile once their most basic needs are met. Whatever it is, it has to work and the user has to be able to figure out how to make it work in fairly short order.
The problem we have is that software that meets users' basic needs and software that lives up to the loftier rights in this article are, far too often, mutually exclusive.
People make the best use of what they have, what they know and what they’re willing to spend money and time on. i dont agree that people have chosen not to have privacy or portability or the other things you mention, they simply dont have an option in the market, they dont have the money, they dont have the knowledge (PGP? Cmon my mum can barely find Outlook and the New Email button).
The industry needs to do better, this argument is a cop out.
Exactly. The entire concept of "revealed preference", to which the parent post was referring, displays an incredible level of arrogance. To say that somebody doesn't like what they say they like, and that it is their own fault for being forced into a choice that they are unhappy with, shows an astounding lack of empathy.
I think people do "want" those things, just in a soft "so as long as I can keep using everything I'm already comfortable with in the same way for the same price" sort of sense.
I'll go ahead and list some other things I want from my technology:
> It should be cheap, preferably free, since I don't have infinite money and would much prefer to spend the money I do have on things like food, housing and entertainment.
> It should be easy to use, fast and generally have good UX.
> It should be bug-free to a reasonable degree. (Does not need to be flawless but not so buggy that it gets in the way)
> If battery powered, I expect it to last at least a day between charges since I am often out for the entire day.
> Related to the UX point above: it should be fairly stable. I don't want my phone to stop working because some FOSS dev started working on something else and "forgot" about the package that is now a crucial part of my phone OS.
Clearly some of these points conflict with each other and with the points in the original list. That said, I think my list is closer to the revealed preferences of phone buyers than the one in the original article.
If people cared about any of that, truly, deeply, then why is Gmail so dominant?
I’ll use Gmail as an example here, as I think it has less network effects than Facebook. Yes, there’s the big damn hurdle of having to have contacts update your email address, but past that, there are absolutely alternatives like FastMail. But those cost money, so they have not taken off. (I pay for FastMail, I love FastMail, I think they’re profitable, they are not going to set the Nasdaq on fire.)
I remember, in the olden days of Facebook, back when it was very college-only, that people would post all sorts of fake news that Zuckerberg was going to start charging for the service, and people would bitch and moan like you would not believe. Privacy is a think people think they want, and arguably do want, but their revealed preference is to trade privacy for free.
> They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people".
This feels like the main gist of your thoughts, but I don't see it like this. To me, people can value things very highly, but poor implementations, a lack of other people also following the same aspirations & hopes... culturation is hard. Reprogramming new behaviors is hard. Just because current implementations fall short doesn't in any way to me indicate a lack of priorities, a non-valueing.
To me, what really faila about this posting is not at all the people. What fails is the value system. There are some very strong very serious very good principles espoused in this post. But they are all negative liberties, freedom from harms, freedom from bads. Bass abound, oh yes. But actual liberation, the better "as tech should be" needs to be revamped on entirely different fronts. It's not about freedom froms, not about negative liberties, it's about far advanced freedom to'es, positive liberties.
Right now we lack basic basic freedoms, basic wills. We have so little contact with ourselves, with what we desire, for so many negatives dog us, software mediates so much, in un-free, non-positive ways that all we can do is pick out which prison bars we find most tasteless, which negative liberty transgressions we dislike most.
Are people actually asking for these things? As in, en masse, and in general? Or is it a loud and frustrated few, suggesting that "people want this"?
I genuinely believe that there are a few people who have raised the above concerns, loudly, some other loud people have hopped on the bandwagon, and most people don't think about, nor care about, most of the things on this list.
Side nit:
On a fundamental level, "wanting a right" is an awkward fallacy, and this is border-lining a philosophical discussion. Like demanding a gift - it's no longer a gift if you demand it be given to you.
Is this punitive language necessary or helpful in any way? It comes off as super childish to me to word a request like this...
Part of me is against walled gardens philosophically but in practice it seems like regardless of whether its a monopoly in practice it actually serves to protect consumers from their own stupidity.
Just like you have to force your employees to follow security practices, it seems like if we really wanted technology to be secure/privacy friendly we'd basically have to force it upon people for their own good.
I don't think even the author thinks vertical
Monopolies are bad - he mentions Netflix as a positive the first sentence. I don't remember Netflix giving me the right to access their content on other streaming platforms. Unfortunately other studios have now followed suit.
I mostly agree. After complaining a lot about why manufacturers never do the right things, a few guys in the industry came in to say "we did.. we sold nothing, now we're making iphone clones".
Consumerism is consumerism. In a different context surely people would buy sturdy, open, simpler, modular stuff.
That would only be true if there was a tradeoff inherent in technology people prefer. There isnt, but the best technology often has the worst privacy and most anti consumer practices because it makes more money
Is it not the first open phone out there, ever? Regardless, it is too expensive, and I need a phone, so I compromise. I have a shitty Android phone, and I do not store secrets on it.
That's not a fair assessment. You're judging human beings by their worst tendencies, which is to get addicted to stupid things like Instagram and Coca Cola.
You're right. I don't disagree with all those things, but ultimately there is no "we" when it comes to those things. People are lazy and just want the immediate gratification and then wonder why the power gap between the elites them is forever increasing.
> Shira Ovide asks “a wild question: What if we played games, shopped, watched Netflix and read news on our smartphones — without using apps? Our smartphones, like our computers, would instead mostly be gateways to go online through a web browser.”
Correct me if I'm wrong but the iPhone actually did start that way, right? Apple only added an app store after the fact, because web apps weren't fast and functional enough, and the app store was a huge success with consumers.
I imagine in this alternate universe where web apps take off because Apple adds support for nonstandard functionality to Safari to accommodate user needs, people would be upset with them as well.
And at least for watching Netflix, reading news, shopping, and playing games, well, you can do that in a phone web browser now.
If web apps "weren't fast and functional enough", users could run (native) programs instead.
There is nothing in that situation that necessitates an "App Store", through which Apple, instead of the iPhone owner, controls who can write, distribute and run programs on the computer, and profits from the work of third party developers.
When they extended this land grab to Apple laptops and desktops, was it because non-Apple approved applications "weren't fast and functional enough".
This. I don't think anybody, least of all Todd Weaver, is saying we should not have any native applications. When he writes "web", I think it's largely fair to substitute that with "http(s) APIs optionally fronted with web UIs".
The key is open standards and full freedom and control over your device, including what and how gets installed.
I fail to see the difference in the question Shira Ovide is asking. Web apps and app stores are equivalent from the point of view of end-user freedoms: in both cases, the code is controlled by someone else. Web browsers are even worse, because whatever code you have locally is transient and invalidated pretty much every other day.
Let me ask a different question: what if things that don't need to be services weren't a services? What if computing was primarily organized around end-user-controllable apps that only interface with remote services when needed?
(I.e. basically what we had on PC until recently.)
There is a substantial difference in that the app store is a middleman with the potential to control code between the user and the developer (intentionally explicitly ignoring the rare edge case of self-developed software).
On the web, the user can use any app in the world, but the app store limits the user to a specific pre-approved list of apps - there are both advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but that difference is meaningful.
It’s arguable that Apple launched without an app store because they were still cleaning up APIs and coming up with a plan. (And, arguably wise, if so. Apple Watch came out with door with an awful development experience.)
But, yeah, that’s what they started with. And WebOS. And Firefox OS. Where are those web-only operating systems now?
There are three major differences at least. Hardware performance has come a long way. Eventually every phone will be capable of running WebAssembly without the user needing to install or configure anything. And there are no license fees needed to pay per device or per developer.
Yes, althought Symbian already had a Web Runtime by them, and besides having to deal with somewhat cumbersome C++ dialect (Symbian C++), everything that was more than relevant for application development, and the Pocket PC/Windows CE phones as well.
> Apple only added an app store after the fact, because web apps weren't fast and functional enough, and the app store was a huge success with consumers.
That's half correct. The iPhone was always meant to be able to install and run native apps, just because that's how all computers and phones worked back then. The concept of a web app was still pretty far away (Flash was the closest comparison). Even on day one most of the heavy lifting on iPhone was done by apps rather than the browser - email, messaging, music, YouTube, Maps etc.
The novel part was restricting the distribution of apps through their own store. If that hasn't happened, the alternative would be people simply downloading and running iPhone apps from all over the internet, as is standard on most other platforms including macOS.
When the iPhone first launched, Steve Jobs famously promoted web apps as "a very sweet solution". However, in typical Jobsian fasion, he had "forgotten" what he said a couple of months before the launch about the limitations of web apps[0].
depending on the speed of the hardware. With the new phones last few years speed is really not the problem. And you can do a lot of the web. Just not push notification.
Edit: by push notification I mean phone level push notification. When an web page is in the background it stops. And an app can have services running. Yeah and the netflix thing for content protection yeah you need an app.
As others have pointed out, "people" probably don't really value these "wants" that much, relative to more practical matters. I'm not sure how you could show that they do. That's not to say I don't think they are the right thing. I also think web vs. native is a red herring (at least for the purposes of this article).
The problem as I see it is software is not developed as interoperable "components," and it's getting worse. At least you can store a text file on your hard drive, sync it with Dropbox, and edit it with the editor of your choice — meaning app, file format, and storage are separate concerns — but for a web app or cloud-backed native app, these distinctions may not exist, as the representation and storage of a document are completely hidden. Apps have always been pretty monolithic to start with, often with proprietary file formats and limited interoperability. Then there are social networks. Theoretically, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. could all use a common protocol analogous to SMTP.
Email and the web are success stories of standardization and interoperability. Browsers are very highly interchangeable for a very complex document type! However, it's made less exciting by the fact that the web is being used to deliver software written to a standardized API, not to collaborate on documents and information using standardized formats and representations, and not to connect and communicate using common protocols.
The relationship between interoperable software components and making technology available to society: When we have a ubiquitous standard and a go-to, legally usable implementation for X, I feel like we can say we "have the technology" to do X, as a society. For example, we have JPEG and libjpeg. We have the technology to compress (to JPEG's level of ability), store, and exchange images. Is the technology to, say, collaborate in real-time on a spreadsheet available to society? Is there a go-to implementation and a document explaining exactly how it is designed to work?
I'm not saying the world is wrong and should be a different way (e.g. social media sites should all use a common protocol). Obviously there are reasons we got here, and there is no simple argument that things could or should be drastically different. If the root-cause analysis were continued, I would look at how software is developed, how it is funded and monetized, and so on. Nobody was funding OpenSSL development, for example, even though it was a ubiquitous implementation of a ubiquitous standard and a great example of everybody reusing the same component. Companies like IBM and Microsoft, selling suites of business software in the 20th century, were building monolithic office solutions and not small interoperable tools, for business reasons, while Unix took the polar opposite philosophy.
This is a very idealistic view that will appeal to a small percentage of people.
> What do we want from our technology?
What’s missing from this list is that most people want nice things that are affordable (or even “free”) and if they’re expensive, provide a lot more features. They also want things that just work in connecting them (preferably for “free”) to whatever content or people they’re interested in. On the latter, I think the economies of scale are always tilted to favor those who have scaled and can scale (unless the ones with scale become very greedy and/or ignore the competition).
It takes ideals and money to support products that are better in protecting some rights we consider important. That excludes a whole lot of people from choosing.
The N770-900 series was even better in some regards. The hardware keyboard found in some models, and the stock Linux userland offered a fantastic experience.
I can't believe I'm still bitter about the path Nokia took after all these years, but I am. We were so close to having a truly open + superb OS in our mainstream devices...
> But instead of going into their own newly-built submarine
It really was an unbelievable move. I've heard from former Nokia employees that part of the reason for this nutty strategy, was internal division inside the company. The vast majority of Nokia supported going forward with their main OS (Symbian), despite very promising results on Meego (despite having a tiny team compared with Symbian). I guess Intel and others had already dropped out of the partnership as well, they were also invested in this (Moblin), but did not invest further in it.
By choosing something nobody really liked inside Nokia (Windows Phone), at least they did not choose something half the company really hated.
Somebody should make a documentary about the whole thing: "The World That Could Have Been", or some such ...
I'd watch it.
(Given the pivotal importance of mobile in our world, the title would not be an understatement).
There's - also - something to be said about giving people an idea of the "right" thing to yearn for - lust for an endless sea of possibilities, not a drumbeat - as de Saint-Exupéry would put it.-
It was a very strange move. Initially, Nokia had some interest in promoting these devices. The N770 was released in 2005, and the N800 came in 2007, just before the iPhone.
I was a student in Scandinavia and my CS department got gifted a few hundred N800 so that students could hack and develop applications. We coded some cool mesh networking tools, and a text chat on top. It felt so futuristic.
In parallel, I brought an iPhone 1 from the US and it never felt like a superior device. I recall sitting in a SAS plane in Spring 2007, whose departure was delayed for 1 hour due to technical reasons, and hostesses came to my seat as they were blown away by that little device I was watching some videos on. I also showed them my iPhone, and they were not nearly as impressed.
Then, suddenly, before the N9 release they totally dropped the ball. Still, that device won some accolades in the press.
the problem with the premise of the Purism post is based on another article that suggests everything should be done through the web browser, which entails NOT having control of data, software, etc...
"In Imagine a world without apps Shira Ovide asks “a wild question: What if we played games, shopped, watched Netflix and read news on our smartphones — without using apps? Our smartphones, like our computers, would instead mostly be gateways to go online through a web browser.” This question can be extrapolated into a larger question: “What do we want from our technology?""
Jumping straight into talk about providers, personal data, security, etc. assumes cultural scaffolds of 'personal' around the device. That's fine, but the assumption needs to be made aware.
To quote once again from one of the most fun romps I've had in sci-fi[1],
"May you be ever moving towards perfection."
There's a decent check list of basic rights listed in this article, but of the "freedom froms" / negative-liberties variety.
But there's little of the real spirit of adventure, of the endless journey forward.
Technology as it should be is a vast adaptive positive liberty, a thing that is malleable & flexible & capable of, wherever you are, offering you means to push on further, to express your will & potential, not just in pre-set molds, but in the infinite unimaginable ways the original creators of the technology could never have begun to imagine.
something that kind of bums me out is that as long as our infrastructure is opaque and requires subscriptions, we'll always be tracked. There's nothing stopping providers from selling your location data, or things like your DNS requests, and that's sad. And what ever is in place is likely not strong enough to really protect you.
Same goes for credit cards, license plates etc... lots of services exist to mine that and know more about you.
I think this is an interesting post and agree with the ideas, however I do have something to point out about this section:
> What people desire from technology is well documented and can be summed up with a series of buzzwords. The difficulty isn’t knowing what society wants, it is knowing the path to get there.
Now I am one of those people who does desire this from tech products.
But admittedly, the general population ("people") does not care that much.
At least from my experience, people care more about the quality of the product and its ease of use. By far much more than the encryption of data etc...
This doesnt mean I don't think companies should make efforts in this direction, but I think it's important not to project these aspirations to more mainstream people who don't care
I notice that their laptop chargers are not using the now-ubiquitous and standards compliant USB-C interface. I currently work with a ThinkPad X280 and a MPB, both of which use a USB-C port. Seems like an odd decision on Purism's part, especially give that the charging method used for the Librem 5. Nice looking kit otherwise.
I feel that usability is the single biggest issue in technology, these days.
In my opinion, what makes products successful, is that they provide a usable path through their principal workflow. It seems to trump eye candy and (I hate to admit) even quality.
Basically, even if the quality is bad, and the interface spartan; if the workflow is smooth and intuitive (not “dumb,” but grokkable), then the project has a real chance for success.
Simplicity is often mistaken for usability. In my experience, they are not necessarily analogous. If anyone has ever used a Japanese train schedule, they know that it’s possible to present a complex system in a fashion that, after “training,” becomes intuitive.
It seems that the “sweet spot” is an interface that may not be immediately apparent, but “gets out of the way,” once the user gets going.
I had a Windows phone and it allowed me to use a bunch of social networks in the same feed, without needing specific apps. I could open a contact and see their latest posts without needing to go to a specific app. That was pretty great and I miss it. Every app being a locked down island of its own is pretty sad.
The very first paragraph gets it wrong. Imagining the world without apps is not hard; we live in this world. We can do almost anything through the browser in our smartphones, but prefer to use apps instead.
The problem with this argument is that it only works for a small minority of tech people.
What the vast majority of people want is something that is easy, safe and does what they want.
Until a free(as in libertarian) system pops up that can do those three things its not going to be going concern.
I have an iphone, why? not because its cool, its because its easy.
I am fairly certain that an app from the store isn't going to steal my stuff, and is going to work as advertised (assuming the rating system is accurate)
Having had an opensource phone (of sorts) I much prefer the apple walled garden....
I've given up hoping that we can ever get to this stage or even reverse the situation to what it was ca 2000. It seems to me we've lost it for good - for the foreseeable future anyway.
My personal action has been to withdraw from most of the net, no Google accounts, no social media accounts, no online shopping etc. Essentially, I've reverted to almost pre net days. I've even reduced email to a trickle, I've killed off subs from list servers etc. My diversity of activity is only a tiny fraction of what it was a decade ago. This is the price I'm prepared to pay but I know I'm one of very few (and that's the key problem - too few people are complaining).
I reckon it's lost because even highly intelligent friends of mine some of who have been in security and surveillance work and who know the issues very well and hate the present situation simply find it too exhausting to continue fighting. As they say and as I know, it's an ongoing struggle. Every day, it's a new issue and another battle.
For example, I use Linux on PCs where ever possible and my Windows is still Win 7 with automatic updates turned off (because that's as far as I'm prepared to trust Windows), but my caved-in security/surveillance buddies use Win 10 and don't bother to root their Android phones and use Gmail and even Zoom because they complain that they can't fight or are not prepared to fight their families, kids etc. all of whom use social media, Gmail and Win 10 etc., etc. Even I who am more stubborn than most gets criticized by family members who, whilst they have some understanding of the problem, aren't prepared to give up or go cold turkey on these highly addictive products.
As I said in other posts about COVID-19, I can't understand why people can't enjoy the isolation like I do (I've so much to occupy me I can't get bored). This is the problem, whilst I'm prepared to give up the net's goodies, Big Tech's adductive products, my family and so many others are just not prepared to do so.
This was the true genius of those in Big Tech - I detest them with a passion for ruining the net, but I give them 11/10 for brilliance - for developing schemes that make them billions of which ordinary punters, once trapped, have no means of escape from.
Essentially, most people on the planet are so in love with their 'free' Big Tech toys that they not prepared to give them up. As such, there's no pressure on governments to do anything about the situation. We're in the same position with copywrite and patent laws - people aren't marching in the streets, throwing stones through the RIAA's or writer's guild windows, so nothing ever happens.
The other problem is that calls like this, whilst very common, aren't consolidated into a worldwide movement, and in my opinion, that's the real crux of our problem.
Until there's common unity nothing will happen. Unity and consolidation is everything. All disparate groups need to be brought together. For example, the right to repair groups have similar aims - they too must be included.
As I've said, I don't see this happening anytime soon - as too many of those I've mentioned are also addicted to Big Tech's electronic heroin, so it remains a lost cause.
This a peak comment of a particular style of hacker news commentator - the I will die on a hill for one very specific thing and I don't understand why other people cannot see it my way.
Question to OP: do you see a distinction between addictive scroll and like based social media versus Windows/Gmail/Zoom or are they all Big Tech heroin to you?
Yes. Every service or utility is different, and every one of the various sub-functions of each has a different level of interaction with and or effect on human minds. If measured on a black-to-white scale, each and every service/utility as well as their various sub-functions would have intervals whose beginning and end points would be different shades of gray, so too would the lengths of their intervals. This is further complicated by the fact that these ranges would be different for every person on the planet. Whist the collective range of interactions and effects isn't infinite, it is for all practical purposes.
What I am referring to is the net worldwide effect(s). If you like, consider them integrands or areas under curves.
Again, this is made more complex by the fact that each service or utility has changed (and is still changing) over time. Let me give you a simplistic but important example: operating systems. The third operating system I had anything to do with was CP/M. It came self-contained and complete on one floppy. There was no registration necessary and it didn't dial home to Digital Research even with a completely unrestricted internet connection between the computer and D.R. CP/M's primary purpose was to act as an 'intermediate utility' to make it easier for users to load and run programs. It did precious little else.
Now move to the other extreme. Windows 10 purports still to be an operating system and the fact that it loads and runs some programs puts it into the category of operating systems. I say some programs because Microsoft is now censoring what programs can be run, and from recent announcements this will become more restricted over time. The next point is that Windows 10 secretly talks home on multiple fronts and these are all unknown to the user, in doing so it steals users' data and, to date, there's no legislative process in any country that can stop Microsoft from collecting that information—information that can only be decoded by Microsoft.
The third point is that Windows uses/allows advertising—even if you pay outright for Windows 10. Fourth point is that with every new version of Windows, Microsoft deliberately obsoletes older technology so that it can increase profits by forcing users to upgrade hardware. MS's primary planned obsolescence mechanism is refusing to develop software drivers for old hardware for new versions of Windows as well as keeping essential internal system calls/software interfaces/HAL code etc. proprietary and secret (so third parties cannot them). Microsoft, thus, is one of the biggest producers of e-waste in the world. Again, there are no legislative mechanisms anywhere to stop Microsoft doing this. Essentially, Microsoft is too big for politicians anywhere in the world to take it on, as the risks to their political careers are too great. Ipso facto, effectively Microsoft is tampering with democracy, as politicians are too scared to act in the best interests of the citizenry.
My last point is that Microsoft takes it upon itself to experiment in social engineering, which it has done with almost every new version of Windows (the last six being the most influential). That is, features and interfaces are changed at whim and these cause considerable disruption to users—not to mention that most are useless or are of little value—and if you consider the cost of retraining, maintenance, etc. worldwide then it accounts for millions and millions of wasted dollars, not to mention the enormous loss of human time and effort. With Windows 10, the matter is made worse by the fact that users cannot turn off automatic upgrades, which means that new features and interfaces can be added or changed at will—often against users' wishes.
Moreover, this is not the end of it, Microsoft has conned AMD, Intel and Qualcomm to adopt its new Pluton security for Windows. As with most security systems introduced by large manufactures in recent times, their introduction has more to do with ousting completion than it does with security, (this has been obvious to even to Blind Freddy for many years but again politicians aren't game to touch it for reasons given above):
…And that's just the beginning, almost any half-witted observer could write books on the subject it's so vast. The facts are that these changes and many others introduced by Big Tech have principally been driven by profit and with little or no oversight or for consideration of the effects on human users. In effect, users are guinea pigs who haven't given their permission. This has to stop and only legislation can change things effectively. Google/Microsoft officials 'if you do this or that then we'll lock you up' would work absolute wonders.
REMEMBER: What I've said about the progression from DR's CP/M to Microsoft's Windows 10 all happened without users' permission! Moreover, because these huge companies have intimidated legislators to such a degree that even existing anti-monopoly laws haven't been called into play, thus their products have had no effective competition. In effect, Windows is a de facto utility, and at law should be treated as such—effectively we should 'nationalize' it by regulating it to the hilt. Clearly that won't begin with the US but perhaps some country brave enough or prepared to take on or ignore the WTO may eventually lead the way.
We want the right to transparent supply chains
Purism is doing great work, but to me everything in that list comes second to the assurance that my technology purchase isn’t subsidized by underprivileged people’s suffering, as is the case with most un-vetted producers of digital hardware in China and most of Asia. If we’re gonna talk about crucial market corrections, this has to be #1 on the list.
Any digital hardware manufacturer who wants to be part of the solution should be entering into a partnership with Fairphone to set their supply chain straight. I’ll start caring about the openness of my phone once you can assure me that the production of it was cruelty-free.
Buying an ethically sourced computer does more for freedom than buying a computer with zero proprietary software or firmware. As things stand, it's possible, but severely constraining, to insist on a laptop that has no proprietary software. [0] As far as I know, it's not possible to buy an ethically sourced laptop.
[0] https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops
Still, you are correct, it is possible to have safe and healthy working conditions without a problem. I just think there is no conflict if we try to achieve both.
> What do we want from our technology?
> We want the right to change providers.
> We want the right to protect personal data.
> We want the right to verify.
> We want the right to not be tracked.
> We want the right to access.
It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this.
People _could_ use PGP. They _could_ use strong passwords. They _could_ move to defederated social networks. They _could_ lobby their congressional representatives to break up Apple because their walled garden is a vertical monopoly that harms consumers.*
They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people".
* I don't believe this argument, but it is one.
Also, why do you put the word people in quotations? Just because most aren't interested in pursuing technological freedoms doesn't make them less of a people.
The world makes more sense when you learn that what people say and what they do are almost never the same. This is why markets and other analysis of behavior are greater predictors than polls or surveys or esp anecdotes
They are shown a pixel and nothing is said of privacy, and then if they know to dig deeper and find an option with more privacy but much more expensive and lacking massive amounts of features.
In some cases its impossible to avoid a trade-off. A bigger battery will result in a bigger phone so people who say the would buy a bigger battery phone end up not doing that. But for privacy, there doesn't have to be a trade off.
I think a lot of modern tech is designed to make us addicts. So it's pretty apt example. And of course, using the market as the only indication of what people want is creating incentives that optimize for addiction.
It's more of a market game situation, where buyer choice says as much about seller preference as it does buyer preference at some level.
Do I want the right to change providers, verify, and so on? Sure. Do I want them at any cost? No.
I could get a lot of those things today, right now if I was willing to switch to a linux desktop and PureOS phone. I have tried switching to linux many times and and can say with certainty that I am willing to trade quite a bit to be able to use macOS instead of ubuntu, fedora, etc...While I haven't tried PureOS specifically, I did have an Android phone for a while and much prefer iOS.
To your first point, I think what people buy does have a reasonable correlation with what they want when there are other options. Taking the costs into account is of course part of the calculation. "They desire it but only if it is free and without any trade-offs whatsoever" isn't a very useful definition of "want".
Of course, people can only buy what the market provides — and the market will exclusively (or at least disproportionately) provide the most profitable things. So market behavior isn't necessarily the best proxy for people's preferences in aggregate.
This gets even more tricky in discussing other things, like messaging, that have network effects. There it's not just what's offered, and my preference, that matters, but also other people's past options and choices.
The case can be made that people care about the the things in this arcile once their most basic needs are met. Whatever it is, it has to work and the user has to be able to figure out how to make it work in fairly short order.
The problem we have is that software that meets users' basic needs and software that lives up to the loftier rights in this article are, far too often, mutually exclusive.
The industry needs to do better, this argument is a cop out.
> It should be cheap, preferably free, since I don't have infinite money and would much prefer to spend the money I do have on things like food, housing and entertainment.
> It should be easy to use, fast and generally have good UX.
> It should be bug-free to a reasonable degree. (Does not need to be flawless but not so buggy that it gets in the way)
> If battery powered, I expect it to last at least a day between charges since I am often out for the entire day.
> Related to the UX point above: it should be fairly stable. I don't want my phone to stop working because some FOSS dev started working on something else and "forgot" about the package that is now a crucial part of my phone OS.
Clearly some of these points conflict with each other and with the points in the original list. That said, I think my list is closer to the revealed preferences of phone buyers than the one in the original article.
I’ll use Gmail as an example here, as I think it has less network effects than Facebook. Yes, there’s the big damn hurdle of having to have contacts update your email address, but past that, there are absolutely alternatives like FastMail. But those cost money, so they have not taken off. (I pay for FastMail, I love FastMail, I think they’re profitable, they are not going to set the Nasdaq on fire.)
I remember, in the olden days of Facebook, back when it was very college-only, that people would post all sorts of fake news that Zuckerberg was going to start charging for the service, and people would bitch and moan like you would not believe. Privacy is a think people think they want, and arguably do want, but their revealed preference is to trade privacy for free.
This feels like the main gist of your thoughts, but I don't see it like this. To me, people can value things very highly, but poor implementations, a lack of other people also following the same aspirations & hopes... culturation is hard. Reprogramming new behaviors is hard. Just because current implementations fall short doesn't in any way to me indicate a lack of priorities, a non-valueing.
To me, what really faila about this posting is not at all the people. What fails is the value system. There are some very strong very serious very good principles espoused in this post. But they are all negative liberties, freedom from harms, freedom from bads. Bass abound, oh yes. But actual liberation, the better "as tech should be" needs to be revamped on entirely different fronts. It's not about freedom froms, not about negative liberties, it's about far advanced freedom to'es, positive liberties.
Right now we lack basic basic freedoms, basic wills. We have so little contact with ourselves, with what we desire, for so many negatives dog us, software mediates so much, in un-free, non-positive ways that all we can do is pick out which prison bars we find most tasteless, which negative liberty transgressions we dislike most.
I genuinely believe that there are a few people who have raised the above concerns, loudly, some other loud people have hopped on the bandwagon, and most people don't think about, nor care about, most of the things on this list.
Side nit:
On a fundamental level, "wanting a right" is an awkward fallacy, and this is border-lining a philosophical discussion. Like demanding a gift - it's no longer a gift if you demand it be given to you.
Is this punitive language necessary or helpful in any way? It comes off as super childish to me to word a request like this...
Just like you have to force your employees to follow security practices, it seems like if we really wanted technology to be secure/privacy friendly we'd basically have to force it upon people for their own good.
Consumerism is consumerism. In a different context surely people would buy sturdy, open, simpler, modular stuff.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the iPhone actually did start that way, right? Apple only added an app store after the fact, because web apps weren't fast and functional enough, and the app store was a huge success with consumers.
I imagine in this alternate universe where web apps take off because Apple adds support for nonstandard functionality to Safari to accommodate user needs, people would be upset with them as well.
And at least for watching Netflix, reading news, shopping, and playing games, well, you can do that in a phone web browser now.
There is nothing in that situation that necessitates an "App Store", through which Apple, instead of the iPhone owner, controls who can write, distribute and run programs on the computer, and profits from the work of third party developers.
When they extended this land grab to Apple laptops and desktops, was it because non-Apple approved applications "weren't fast and functional enough".
The key is open standards and full freedom and control over your device, including what and how gets installed.
Let me ask a different question: what if things that don't need to be services weren't a services? What if computing was primarily organized around end-user-controllable apps that only interface with remote services when needed?
(I.e. basically what we had on PC until recently.)
On the web, the user can use any app in the world, but the app store limits the user to a specific pre-approved list of apps - there are both advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but that difference is meaningful.
But, yeah, that’s what they started with. And WebOS. And Firefox OS. Where are those web-only operating systems now?
That's half correct. The iPhone was always meant to be able to install and run native apps, just because that's how all computers and phones worked back then. The concept of a web app was still pretty far away (Flash was the closest comparison). Even on day one most of the heavy lifting on iPhone was done by apps rather than the browser - email, messaging, music, YouTube, Maps etc.
The novel part was restricting the distribution of apps through their own store. If that hasn't happened, the alternative would be people simply downloading and running iPhone apps from all over the internet, as is standard on most other platforms including macOS.
[0]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2007/06/13/a-very-sweet-solution/
Edit: by push notification I mean phone level push notification. When an web page is in the background it stops. And an app can have services running. Yeah and the netflix thing for content protection yeah you need an app.
The problem as I see it is software is not developed as interoperable "components," and it's getting worse. At least you can store a text file on your hard drive, sync it with Dropbox, and edit it with the editor of your choice — meaning app, file format, and storage are separate concerns — but for a web app or cloud-backed native app, these distinctions may not exist, as the representation and storage of a document are completely hidden. Apps have always been pretty monolithic to start with, often with proprietary file formats and limited interoperability. Then there are social networks. Theoretically, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. could all use a common protocol analogous to SMTP.
Email and the web are success stories of standardization and interoperability. Browsers are very highly interchangeable for a very complex document type! However, it's made less exciting by the fact that the web is being used to deliver software written to a standardized API, not to collaborate on documents and information using standardized formats and representations, and not to connect and communicate using common protocols.
The relationship between interoperable software components and making technology available to society: When we have a ubiquitous standard and a go-to, legally usable implementation for X, I feel like we can say we "have the technology" to do X, as a society. For example, we have JPEG and libjpeg. We have the technology to compress (to JPEG's level of ability), store, and exchange images. Is the technology to, say, collaborate in real-time on a spreadsheet available to society? Is there a go-to implementation and a document explaining exactly how it is designed to work?
I'm not saying the world is wrong and should be a different way (e.g. social media sites should all use a common protocol). Obviously there are reasons we got here, and there is no simple argument that things could or should be drastically different. If the root-cause analysis were continued, I would look at how software is developed, how it is funded and monetized, and so on. Nobody was funding OpenSSL development, for example, even though it was a ubiquitous implementation of a ubiquitous standard and a great example of everybody reusing the same component. Companies like IBM and Microsoft, selling suites of business software in the 20th century, were building monolithic office solutions and not small interoperable tools, for business reasons, while Unix took the polar opposite philosophy.
> What do we want from our technology?
What’s missing from this list is that most people want nice things that are affordable (or even “free”) and if they’re expensive, provide a lot more features. They also want things that just work in connecting them (preferably for “free”) to whatever content or people they’re interested in. On the latter, I think the economies of scale are always tilted to favor those who have scaled and can scale (unless the ones with scale become very greedy and/or ignore the competition).
It takes ideals and money to support products that are better in protecting some rights we consider important. That excludes a whole lot of people from choosing.
As a long time Nokia N9/Meego user, that world is not hard to imagine.
They had a burning ship. But instead of going into their own newly-built submarine, they trust floats full of money handed out by Microsoft.
F Im furios everytime this topic is mentioned
It really was an unbelievable move. I've heard from former Nokia employees that part of the reason for this nutty strategy, was internal division inside the company. The vast majority of Nokia supported going forward with their main OS (Symbian), despite very promising results on Meego (despite having a tiny team compared with Symbian). I guess Intel and others had already dropped out of the partnership as well, they were also invested in this (Moblin), but did not invest further in it.
By choosing something nobody really liked inside Nokia (Windows Phone), at least they did not choose something half the company really hated.
I'd watch it.
(Given the pivotal importance of mobile in our world, the title would not be an understatement).
There's - also - something to be said about giving people an idea of the "right" thing to yearn for - lust for an endless sea of possibilities, not a drumbeat - as de Saint-Exupéry would put it.-
I was a student in Scandinavia and my CS department got gifted a few hundred N800 so that students could hack and develop applications. We coded some cool mesh networking tools, and a text chat on top. It felt so futuristic.
In parallel, I brought an iPhone 1 from the US and it never felt like a superior device. I recall sitting in a SAS plane in Spring 2007, whose departure was delayed for 1 hour due to technical reasons, and hostesses came to my seat as they were blown away by that little device I was watching some videos on. I also showed them my iPhone, and they were not nearly as impressed.
Then, suddenly, before the N9 release they totally dropped the ball. Still, that device won some accolades in the press.
To quote Bret Victor, "Toolkits, not Apps" : https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057280
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s
Jumping straight into talk about providers, personal data, security, etc. assumes cultural scaffolds of 'personal' around the device. That's fine, but the assumption needs to be made aware.
"May you be ever moving towards perfection."
There's a decent check list of basic rights listed in this article, but of the "freedom froms" / negative-liberties variety.
But there's little of the real spirit of adventure, of the endless journey forward.
Technology as it should be is a vast adaptive positive liberty, a thing that is malleable & flexible & capable of, wherever you are, offering you means to push on further, to express your will & potential, not just in pre-set molds, but in the infinite unimaginable ways the original creators of the technology could never have begun to imagine.
[1] https://www.davidlouisedelman.com/jump225/infoquake/about/
Same goes for credit cards, license plates etc... lots of services exist to mine that and know more about you.
> What people desire from technology is well documented and can be summed up with a series of buzzwords. The difficulty isn’t knowing what society wants, it is knowing the path to get there.
Now I am one of those people who does desire this from tech products.
But admittedly, the general population ("people") does not care that much.
At least from my experience, people care more about the quality of the product and its ease of use. By far much more than the encryption of data etc...
This doesnt mean I don't think companies should make efforts in this direction, but I think it's important not to project these aspirations to more mainstream people who don't care
That is ... a stretch, especially considering that there exists non-free "source available" software (e.g. Unreal).
In my opinion, what makes products successful, is that they provide a usable path through their principal workflow. It seems to trump eye candy and (I hate to admit) even quality.
Basically, even if the quality is bad, and the interface spartan; if the workflow is smooth and intuitive (not “dumb,” but grokkable), then the project has a real chance for success.
Simplicity is often mistaken for usability. In my experience, they are not necessarily analogous. If anyone has ever used a Japanese train schedule, they know that it’s possible to present a complex system in a fashion that, after “training,” becomes intuitive.
It seems that the “sweet spot” is an interface that may not be immediately apparent, but “gets out of the way,” once the user gets going.
Romanticism is fun but not great for thinking for the future.
What the vast majority of people want is something that is easy, safe and does what they want.
Until a free(as in libertarian) system pops up that can do those three things its not going to be going concern.
I have an iphone, why? not because its cool, its because its easy.
I am fairly certain that an app from the store isn't going to steal my stuff, and is going to work as advertised (assuming the rating system is accurate)
Having had an opensource phone (of sorts) I much prefer the apple walled garden....
My personal action has been to withdraw from most of the net, no Google accounts, no social media accounts, no online shopping etc. Essentially, I've reverted to almost pre net days. I've even reduced email to a trickle, I've killed off subs from list servers etc. My diversity of activity is only a tiny fraction of what it was a decade ago. This is the price I'm prepared to pay but I know I'm one of very few (and that's the key problem - too few people are complaining).
I reckon it's lost because even highly intelligent friends of mine some of who have been in security and surveillance work and who know the issues very well and hate the present situation simply find it too exhausting to continue fighting. As they say and as I know, it's an ongoing struggle. Every day, it's a new issue and another battle.
For example, I use Linux on PCs where ever possible and my Windows is still Win 7 with automatic updates turned off (because that's as far as I'm prepared to trust Windows), but my caved-in security/surveillance buddies use Win 10 and don't bother to root their Android phones and use Gmail and even Zoom because they complain that they can't fight or are not prepared to fight their families, kids etc. all of whom use social media, Gmail and Win 10 etc., etc. Even I who am more stubborn than most gets criticized by family members who, whilst they have some understanding of the problem, aren't prepared to give up or go cold turkey on these highly addictive products.
As I said in other posts about COVID-19, I can't understand why people can't enjoy the isolation like I do (I've so much to occupy me I can't get bored). This is the problem, whilst I'm prepared to give up the net's goodies, Big Tech's adductive products, my family and so many others are just not prepared to do so.
This was the true genius of those in Big Tech - I detest them with a passion for ruining the net, but I give them 11/10 for brilliance - for developing schemes that make them billions of which ordinary punters, once trapped, have no means of escape from.
Essentially, most people on the planet are so in love with their 'free' Big Tech toys that they not prepared to give them up. As such, there's no pressure on governments to do anything about the situation. We're in the same position with copywrite and patent laws - people aren't marching in the streets, throwing stones through the RIAA's or writer's guild windows, so nothing ever happens.
The other problem is that calls like this, whilst very common, aren't consolidated into a worldwide movement, and in my opinion, that's the real crux of our problem.
Until there's common unity nothing will happen. Unity and consolidation is everything. All disparate groups need to be brought together. For example, the right to repair groups have similar aims - they too must be included.
As I've said, I don't see this happening anytime soon - as too many of those I've mentioned are also addicted to Big Tech's electronic heroin, so it remains a lost cause.
I just wish it weren't so.
Question to OP: do you see a distinction between addictive scroll and like based social media versus Windows/Gmail/Zoom or are they all Big Tech heroin to you?
What I am referring to is the net worldwide effect(s). If you like, consider them integrands or areas under curves.
Again, this is made more complex by the fact that each service or utility has changed (and is still changing) over time. Let me give you a simplistic but important example: operating systems. The third operating system I had anything to do with was CP/M. It came self-contained and complete on one floppy. There was no registration necessary and it didn't dial home to Digital Research even with a completely unrestricted internet connection between the computer and D.R. CP/M's primary purpose was to act as an 'intermediate utility' to make it easier for users to load and run programs. It did precious little else.
Now move to the other extreme. Windows 10 purports still to be an operating system and the fact that it loads and runs some programs puts it into the category of operating systems. I say some programs because Microsoft is now censoring what programs can be run, and from recent announcements this will become more restricted over time. The next point is that Windows 10 secretly talks home on multiple fronts and these are all unknown to the user, in doing so it steals users' data and, to date, there's no legislative process in any country that can stop Microsoft from collecting that information—information that can only be decoded by Microsoft.
The third point is that Windows uses/allows advertising—even if you pay outright for Windows 10. Fourth point is that with every new version of Windows, Microsoft deliberately obsoletes older technology so that it can increase profits by forcing users to upgrade hardware. MS's primary planned obsolescence mechanism is refusing to develop software drivers for old hardware for new versions of Windows as well as keeping essential internal system calls/software interfaces/HAL code etc. proprietary and secret (so third parties cannot them). Microsoft, thus, is one of the biggest producers of e-waste in the world. Again, there are no legislative mechanisms anywhere to stop Microsoft doing this. Essentially, Microsoft is too big for politicians anywhere in the world to take it on, as the risks to their political careers are too great. Ipso facto, effectively Microsoft is tampering with democracy, as politicians are too scared to act in the best interests of the citizenry.
My last point is that Microsoft takes it upon itself to experiment in social engineering, which it has done with almost every new version of Windows (the last six being the most influential). That is, features and interfaces are changed at whim and these cause considerable disruption to users—not to mention that most are useless or are of little value—and if you consider the cost of retraining, maintenance, etc. worldwide then it accounts for millions and millions of wasted dollars, not to mention the enormous loss of human time and effort. With Windows 10, the matter is made worse by the fact that users cannot turn off automatic upgrades, which means that new features and interfaces can be added or changed at will—often against users' wishes.
Moreover, this is not the end of it, Microsoft has conned AMD, Intel and Qualcomm to adopt its new Pluton security for Windows. As with most security systems introduced by large manufactures in recent times, their introduction has more to do with ousting completion than it does with security, (this has been obvious to even to Blind Freddy for many years but again politicians aren't game to touch it for reasons given above):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFY0a_VOGbE
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...
…And that's just the beginning, almost any half-witted observer could write books on the subject it's so vast. The facts are that these changes and many others introduced by Big Tech have principally been driven by profit and with little or no oversight or for consideration of the effects on human users. In effect, users are guinea pigs who haven't given their permission. This has to stop and only legislation can change things effectively. Google/Microsoft officials 'if you do this or that then we'll lock you up' would work absolute wonders.
REMEMBER: What I've said about the progression from DR's CP/M to Microsoft's Windows 10 all happened without users' permission! Moreover, because these huge companies have intimidated legislators to such a degree that even existing anti-monopoly laws haven't been called into play, thus their products have had no effective competition. In effect, Windows is a de facto utility, and at law should be treated as such—effectively we should 'nationalize' it by regulating it to the hilt. Clearly that won't begin with the US but perhaps some country brave enough or prepared to take on or ignore the WTO may eventually lead the way.