1073
I have fond memories of these days (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/funny@lemmy.world
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[–] 76 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Now we're all reading Lemmy and trying to save open computing because we're the only generation who knows what it is.

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  • [–] 30 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    I teach computer science, and when we talk about networking and the internet, I apologize to the students. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago* (4 children)

    It wasn't supposed to be like this.

    I'm wondering if you have any reference resources on-hand for this. Like if we can identify where exactly it went wrong and how it was supposed to be, to point to in a somewhat scholarly sense.

    As a 90's kid self-taught dabbler in comp-sci / FOSS advocate, my first thoughts for ultimately disasterous elements usually go to corporate disruption, like the iPhone. Maybe if we go further back, Internet Explorer?

    I feel like this stuff is intentionally buried to be as if it had never been. General computer knowledge used to be more commonplace, now gen-pops are ignorant slaves to stupid black-box appliances and monolithic rent-seeking cloud services. It sucks.

    We are the resistance though. The indie web is growing by the day. Gen-Z has been ditching social media. Open source stuff like Linux or Blender are exploding within niche circles like gaming and indie creator spaces. There's hope. :)

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Reagan. It's always Reagan. However, in this case I do not know the specific steps that deregulation took between his disaster of a presidency and the present day.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago*

    Reagan. It's always Reagan.

    Gosh dammit, isn't it always‽ I know beforehand, corruption in the late 70's laid the groundwork that culminated in the finishing move that was Reagan upending everything, but it's crazy how destructive his reign was, and how we're still dealing with the consequences, and how there are still people that think anything he did was remotely good for the people.

    For our overseas brethren, replace with Thatcher. Total monster.

    Yeah, I'm curious about the true effects dereg had on the tech industry as a whole. Like, would we still have gotten PCs in our households like we did? Or would the government have say, cracked down harder on Microsoft and Apple monopolies?

    I wonder if there's any way we can really know. Because if we can see where it went wrong, maybe we can paint a clearer picture of how it could be turned right...

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    All unregulated systems consolidate. This is the natural evolution of letting media and data mining run without any guide rails. This is why the ultimate concept for all these companies is to provide access to everything... Your friends, your shopping, your entertainment, all discussions, all money, all search, every service goes through the monolith. Nobody is regulating any of this, because the barrier to entry for software has been so low, they'll say they aren't monopolies, and we don't regulate relatively normally run business.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    what? foss computing was always and always will be incredibly niche.

    computing has always been dominated by large corporations and non-techincal users have always considers computers to be magical and mysterious and confusing.

    web

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    This comment is real.

    Previous generations grew up without Internet at all, and later generations grew up in a world where you get an iPad in your face from age 3 and haven't known anything other than corporate centralisation.

    There's only so many of us were online in that brief period of time where the Internet felt like something that would unite people, rather than being algorithmically weaponised to divide us.

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