Subj : Re: SSH on BBSes
To   : Nightfox
From : boraxman
Date : Sat Apr 16 2022 18:56:32

 Ni>  bo> Tech really has taken a turn for the worse, with the "consumer" model
 Ni>  bo> devices and apps. We have the power to run our own social networks, t
 Ni>  bo> handle our own communications, and yet, we centralise it all in the h
 Ni>  bo> of Big Tech. 
 Ni> 
 Ni>  bo> Sometimes (more often than not), the vision of making computers
 Ni>  bo> user-friendly, ubiquitous and accessible was a mistake. 
 Ni> 
 Ni> I'm not sure about that..  Computers have becomne such useful tools for
 Ni> many things.  For a long time now, I've owned a computer and have used
 Ni> them for work, entertainment, financial tracking & other notes, work,
 Ni> etc..
 Ni> 
 Ni> Although we have the power to run our own social networks &
 Ni> communication, as you say, I think the reason that's not very common is
 Ni> that not very many people know how.  I run a BBS, and I suppose that
 Ni> could be considered a type of social network, but not many people these
 Ni> days seem to care or even know what a BBS is anymore.
 Ni> 
 Ni> Also, it may make more sense to have a big company do that since more
 Ni> people would use a single social networking site rather than a bunch of
 Ni> distributed social networking sites.
 Ni> 
 Ni> For a while it seemed most people had a desktop PC at home, and I've
 Ni> been a bit surprised these days to hear some people don't even have a
 Ni> laptop and just use their smartphone and/or tablet, if anything.  Even
 Ni> as useful as computers are, it seems many people still don't really know
 Ni> how to use them well or don't have a use for them except for smartphones
 Ni> & tablets.
 Ni> 


The fact that many people don't know how to use them, and can only "consume content" on a smartphone, is to me, evidence of how tech has taken a turn for the worse.  There are piles of electronic, hazardous landfill for each person, and the result is tech used mostly for inane social media chatter, and for fairly disruptive, socially destructive business models.  Add the environmental disaster that is BitCoin.

We use computers at work (obviously!), yet the workflows are slow, clunky, and terrible.  This is typical of my experience in workplaces.  Data that is not stored property (excel spreadsheets instead of a database you can query), spreadsheets where people think the colour scheme matters more than the data formats.  No business logic encoded in the system.  Data thrown here and there.  We have specifications in signed, scanned PDF documents.  Utterly inaccessible electronically.  If you want to extract data, you have to open up the PDF, by using a convoluted "Share point" system (we have multiple solutions like this) through a web browser, eyeball the data, then type it in to the e-mail to send to whoever requested it.  You can't even link an excel spreadsheet to another because of the cloud hosting.

People copying and pasting data from one document to another.  PEople who have NO KNOWLEDGE of Information Technology, storing information electronically.

This is the same everywhere. People always losing their data because they can't backup, or don't know how to copy from one machine to another.  They run their business off a Faceberg page, and then are at the mercy of a company which can cut them off (and Faceberg did that in Australia when they had a spat with the government).  Computers thrown into landfill, well, just because they don't know how they can use what they have to solve a problem.

And centrally controlled Social Media is a curse.  Sure, its "easy", but look at the cost.  Big Tech almost getting to decide who wins the US election, mass censorship, social malaise, suicide of teen girls.

WE have no autonomy, no knowledge of how to computer, instead the masses lurch from controlled solution to controlled solution.  It's as if all the work creating solutions in the last 40 years is for nothing, because no one can use them, only the latest web-based cloud tool.

The vision of Bill Gates was a bunch of dumb consumers, and that is what we have.  People who just have entertainment devices, but can't make them do ANYTHING except the apps that Apple/Google let into their ecosystem.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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