This is a pretty good article. Something I try to stress to my students. Technology is a major driver of culture and society, and understanding that complexity of relationships is important. It’s not developed in an isolated bubble, nor is any technology neutral or value-free.

I like that the article highlights community engagement. That is so very true. Otherwise some good-intended deployment can quickly become technological colonialism when the users might not be able to do system upkeep or it solves the wrong problem

Love how it highlights that big tech (much to capitalism's fault, TBH) can only drive innovation if the tech has a moat around it, if no one else can, or would, copy it and deploy it at a lower cost.

Which is... the argument that people use to defend capitalism? That capitalism drives innovation and makes it accessible to everyone at the lowest possible price.

I like the frugal tech idea as much as I like degrowth.

Frugal tech idea and degrowth are more capitalist than a handful of monopolies owning you in every orifice and billing you for it.

If by "capitalism" we don't mean paleo-industrialism of XIX-century aristocrats with monocles and child labor. If we do mean the "free market with protections for property, rights, safety and anti-monopoly regulations yadda-yadda" moderate-normal-classical model.

That's basically saying that "big tech" (as we know it today) and competition-friendly capitalism just cannot coexist. Which I'm inclined to agree with.

Just use open source software with open protocols.

We should have a GPL update that disallows using the software within closed sourced eco systems."this software is only allowed to be run on open source operating systems" for example.

That kinda exists. It's called AGPL. So even if people just use open source software as a service. They have to provide the code. Still doesn't stop you from running it on proprietary systems, but I don't think that's an issue outside of governments. If a corp decides to buy windows and run their software on it I don't care. As long as my government has to dependency on a foreign software giant like microsoft.

AGPL sort of requires this and I've started to use it in projects that run on networks. The problem I've seen is that so many cloud providers use software with permissive licenses like MIT.

Honestly, more projects need to switch to licenses that require contributions back to the source if you publicly built upon it.

My company, for example, has a FOSS scanner and rejects any library that has copyleft provisions. I imagine most companies do. The corporate world would become absolutely fucked if every package decided to use GPL.

And just a reminder how one developer fucked over companies by removing his library from npm.

Too bad this doesn't really mention the Fediverse or open-source software. Seems a next logical step

fediverse

That is my point yes. Open Source projects must stop using these permissive licenses, it's allowed companies to enrich themselves by screwing over all internet users and it cost them nothing because of these licenses.

At least invest in your own damned software, assholes

That just sounds like you don't want the majority of people to use it. You still only have 4% of desktop users on Linux.

FOSS doesn't work as well for everything. But for something like this privacy and not leaking data is more important if you're going to run it on your computer.

There's no reason you couldn't have people grow a new Internet that isn't reliant on AWS and cloud flare and other big tech stuff, it's just that it's much easier to do that since it's already there. And you still have the problems with spammers even if you try to move away from capitalism.

Everyone can use it, use it all they want however they want

Having said that: Large corporations shouldn't be able to profit endlessly off of my work for free, fuck that shit

“Capitalism creates innovation!”
The innovation:

Yes, something where FOSS shines. Linus' law and Kerckhoff's principle.

Microscopes are crucial for diagnosing infections but can cost millions of pounds, making them entirely inaccessible for many people across the globe.

Good article but this stood out as a massive exaggeration. They can cost millions, much like a car can cost millions, but I can pick up a microscope sufficient for most clinical laboratory work for around $200-300. A cheap epifluoresence microscope can be acquired for around $2k.

Still an inaccessible amount for many, but it's several orders of magnitude cheaper.

Making more walled gardens would probably only polarize society more, not help it. But the emotion is understandable.

Is that really true though? Like there’s no reason I could be president except for the massive amount of connections and funding is need that effectively means it is not possible for me to be effective. (Nussbaum or Sen would say this is not about actual capability.)

I certainly think we could grow a new internet, but there is so much culture and forces pushing against this, that it may not be actually possible with addressing the systemic forces first.

Not to say we should do nothing (similar to recycling — we should do what we can as individuals, but it’s somewhat moot as long as industrial processes continue as they are now). We should do what we can and work toward a better vision.

(Edit: I think I was responding to only the first part of your comment because when I re-read it, I think I’m actually saying something similar to you)