I harbor a great fear that we have become overwhelmingly misguided in our mass popularization of networked computing and large-scale reliance/transcendence of proprietary software into our personal and social lives. We have strayed far from some of the revolutionary ideas from which the internet and personal computing were birthed and if our present trajectory is left unaltered the technological future we will find ourselves in is not overwhelmingly bright. It is for this reason that I feel compelled to speak up, asking much from young software authors like myself that are finding their skills so ever more in-demand and who I know care so deeply for the future of a media in which they have found such connection, challenge, and personal achievement.
For them (and others), this document is intended to present a perspective of technological positivism at its core layered deeply under a mantle of skepticism regarding aggressive and damaging actions by tech companies to assert control over their products and customers and a crust of negativity surrounding the commercial centric appeal of consumer technologies.
We must think critically, tread slowly, and act consciously in our role as producers of computer technologies. We must realize that we have a great power in what we can create and the affects that those creations will have on others. For this reason the things that we invest our time in should be direct extensions of the things we believe in, the ideas that we hold dear, and the communities that we represent and intend to empower with our implementation of a technology. In an age when young, educated and affluent coders are treated as high wizards in their social circles and offered outrageous salaries by the most monolithic of tech conglomerates and trendiest of startups alike, I ask that those to whom this description accurately describes consider first what they can create with their powerful and unique voice as individuals and/or prideful representatives of their communities before accepting jobs as engineers, IT specialists, designers, creatives, etc with a company that puts its own interests in monetary gain and market control above all else.
When this generation of young and aspiring software authors become old and retired software authors, consider the life's work they will be most proud of having contributed to. Will it be work that actively encourages and proliferates the privatization of the world's newest technological achievements for the profit of the few by the exclusion of the many or will it be work that exemplifies their personality and personal values?
Before I marginalize or offend a reader proudly employed by a tech company that matches the above portrayal, allow me to contextualize my statements and provide historical relevance to my claims.
Following the advent and first applications of computational technologies during and after the Second World War, Vannevar Bush, an American engineer, inventor, and scientist, charged the United States to pivot their attentions from the war effort to invest in the invention and betterment of computational tools and devices for the mutual benefit of American citizens in his essay As We May Think, published in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic. In his seminal essay, Bush proposes that, "now, for many, this [war] appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?" He goes on to lay the foundation for a Memory Extender, or Memex machine that could exist as a scholarly aid or personal library-like augmentation machine that would utilize some of the technologies and ideas developed during the war (namely those of Alan Turing). This machine would allow for the replication and proliferation of information translated from the form of books, journals, and other publications to a desk encased machine that supported the storage, indexing, quick accessibility and sharing of these writings.
While the Memex was never built, it presented the revolutionary idea of an electronic machine that was intended to augment the human experience, increase the accessibility of information to a wide population, and ultimately to encourage the betterment of society. For decades since we have been enamored by ideas of Artificial Intelligence, human augmentation through machine applications, and the possibility of total accessibility of information through the design and use of computers and computing systems.
In the decades following the war we have explored some of the most vibrant of possibilities for digital computing. The 1950s brought with it a strong foundation of ideas of Artificial Intelligence in academia. The 1960s saw the early but widespread presence of the study of Computer Science in major universities in the United States, as well as a great practical and theoretical influence on computing and ideas of software sharing, digital freedoms and consciousness expansion through computation enacted by the counter-culture movement. The 1970s saw the early foundation of Paul Allen and Bill Gate's Microsoft, the first company to successfully sell software to a large consumer market, as well as early traces of community driven computing technologies like the first Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Eventually, many of the ideas that had been realized by researchers, entrepreneurs and hippies alike would proliferate the upper and middle class through the popularization of the home computer in the 1980s. By and large, the introduction of the World Wide Web in the 1990s has led us in great mass to a personal relationship/social state with networked computing that far exceeds the capabilities that could be dreamed of in the introduction of the Memex. The PC, the WWW, and now the propagation of mobile devices have defined a new era of computing that we find ourselves in.
Driven by a corporate economy and a military–industrial complex, it would be easy to argue that the world of commercial technology that has nearly swallowed us whole is to be expected and encouraged from the perspective of a capitalist business model. John Markoff, author of the profound title, What the Doormouse Said, a historical account of the influence of 1960s Counter-culture on the Personal Computer industry, would disagree.
Forgotten among the thousands of great fortunes since made from the personal-computing industry is the simple fact that the foundation for the industry was laid not by entrepreneurs but rather political activist [Fred Moore] and a group of hobbyists [namely the Homebrew Computer Club] whose original motivation was sharing information.
- John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, pp. 192
I reject the argument that our contemporary software condition must present a natural extension from a combination of a military-industrial complex and influx of commercial entrepreneurship, and I look towards efforts presented by the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation as a solution.
The computer is too powerful a device to remain guided primarily by a corporate agenda. As software authors we have assumed a role that is largely that of an implementor of ideas sent down from companies and corporations to build products that calculatedly target a sea of cripplingly controlled "users" and "consumers" of technologies instead of projects that empower their creators, warrant just and innate freedoms to their communities, and grant entire populations a new kind of digital literacy that is focused on active speaking and creating rather than passive listening and consuming.
In his book, The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, critic and digital media theorist Peter Lunenfeld rightly refers to the computer as our generation's own cultural machine. For those of us who hold such great technological power, we must consider the way that we will participate in the development and extension of this cultural machine. As we best can, we must not be tempted by the niceties of corrupt companies' incentives and luxuries that provide us with our "dream jobs" as our efforts in doing so will further these companies' reach and power that will inevitably leave us surrounded by control hungry and homogeneous top-down hardware/software producers with overwhelmingly loud voices. In an analogy that Lunenfeld would undoubtedly support, we must turn the radio off and pick up the megaphone.
My young software authors, I charge you to invest your efforts in building technologies that you are personally invested in while remaining conscious of creating tools, resources, and projects that exhibit and protect your freedoms and the freedoms of those you intend to empower while remaining skeptical, critical, and aware that the majority of proprietary softwares and software companies are explicitly resisting these qualities and efforts.
Nice - write more stuff please
I think this does a great job of explaining the why of your argument, but I think in times like we're in the "how" is becoming more and more important...it touches on the how (as it should I think - so as not to dilute your argument too much) - but maybe thoughts for another essay