The quest for "usability" and, to a lesser extent, "security" has wrapped most tech in so many layers of prescriptive, over simplified interfaces that it has cut off the paths that used to bridge professional and casual tech competence, creating two distinct social classes.
Most have given a handful of corporations an unrestricted backdoor into their entire digital lives because the learning curve required to shape technology to their needs by themselves has started to resemble a threshold function.
And that has nothing to do with the complexity of the tech. Most tech has not gotten more complicated - in fact we have way better tools for managing complexity - but it's hidden, obfuscated & locked away to prevent people from fiddling with it..for "usability" and "security"
My grandparents have been making this point for decades, but about cars - they were comfortable fixing their own car, or at least understanding what was wrong, for decades on decades - that stopped being the case as more was locked behind proprietary interfaces.
Understanding the tech that you rely on is power.
That power is trending in a very clear direction - it's been flowing away from competent amateurs to a very small group of professionals (and in many cases only to those with certain access) and that fact should worry everyone.
That power is trending in a very clear direction - it's been flowing away from competent amateurs to a very small group of professionals (and in many cases only to those with certain access) and that fact should worry everyone.
And it's compounding - if you don't feel competent fixing the tools you rely on now, you've automatically reject or fear newer tools - the slow drop of power loss becomes a self-limiting restriction on what you think you *can* understand.
It's tempting to frame this as an individual problem - learning to code among other tech skills has never been easier to learn - and with some ingenuity you can bend a lot of tech to your will.
But those individuals need to first learn that shaping that tech is *possible*
But those individuals need to first learn that shaping that tech is *possible*
If you want actual privacy, actual security, actual tech empowerment then you can't rely on tech professionals to build things for you.
Part of that is demanding open standards and an end to proprietary interfaces, and another is taking responsibility to rebuild those bridges.
Part of that is demanding open standards and an end to proprietary interfaces, and another is taking responsibility to rebuild those bridges.
