gopher://perma.computer

Worth a read.

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    11 months ago

    Copied from gopher://perma.computer:70/0/letter.txt:

    ==============================================
    Technological Futures: A Letter to the Smolnet
    ==============================================
    
    We're standing at a crossroads. Technological progression has led to a
    retreat from physicality; whole classes of devices - cameras, music
    players, notebooks - have been replaced by computers. Mass
    computerization of most types of human activity and corporate control
    of mainstream computer ecosystems has led to a drive toward constant
    monetization and constant growth. Rapid upgrade cycles - often annual
    or more - have resulted in a pervasive attitude of disposability,
    generating enormous waste and resource consumption. These two stages -
    "replace everything with computers" and "build computers in such a way
    as to maximize recurring revenue" - have produced an alarming result:
    functioning in a society nearly mandates ceding ground to
    technocapitalism, and this trend is accelerating. 
    
    Large deep-learning models are increasingly being used for things
    historically seen as the bastions of human ingenuity and creativity -
    images, writing, music, code. Almost universally, these are
    characterized by their use of human-generated training data scraped
    from the Internet and their corporate ownership and operation. These
    models are now being commercialized - such as by Microsoft with
    Copilot, which costs a monthly fee. Worse, the major search engines
    are moving from a "search and get a URL list" approach to a "ask our
    conversational language model" approach, leaving those who actually
    write things as little more than upstream suppliers to a bot.
    Meanwhile, extruded text product and extruded imagery product - "AI
    text" and "AI art" - make up a larger and larger portion of the
    Internet. 
    
    We stand for an alternative vision - a humane, sustainable approach to
    computing, independent of growth imperatives, the need for
    monetization, and the concept of obsolescence. 
    
    Two Futures
    ===========
    
    The Corporate Internet: Automation, Stagnation, Depletion
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    
    We have been repeatedly assured that we are on the edge of a great and
    glorious new era - one where automated systems and emerging
    technologies allow human productivity to soar to new heights. The
    utopian promise of an AI-assisted golden age is being promoted as a
    possible future - if only we trust in a handful of large tech
    companies (Alphabet and Microsoft/OpenAI prominent among them) to know
    that is best for us. 
    
    So what, then, does the future look like? It looks like massive
    changes to a large portion of knowledge-worker jobs. Some jobs will be
    less affected, especially those in the trades, but these jobs will
    mostly be in the category of "jobs too cheap to automate" - plumbing,
    shipbreaking, retail, clothing manufacture, construction, waste
    processing, some kinds of factory labor. The purpose of investment in
    automation is to save money for the ownership class; this does not
    line up with providing a comfortable living for everyone. With a
    smaller number of available jobs, employer leverage over labor will
    increase. Working hours will become longer - and for those who refuse
    to work them, there will always be replacements available.
    Productivity will be monitored by machines, and enforcement actions
    will be automated and impersonal as well. 
    
    In the developing world, the same pattern will apply. Mass
    exploitation of people and resources will continue and expand in the
    interest of feeding the expanding consumer needs of the
    developed-world upper class. Investment from the developed world will,
    as ever, primarily occur under the rubric of "how can we increase
    efficiency of production and extraction?" - not any genuine intent of
    long-term improvements in quality of life. As is already happening,
    the nastier and less visible parts of AI product development -
    especially manual tagging of training data - will be dumped on
    underpaid workers in developing countries. Increased capital capture
    of governments in developing and developed countries will simplify
    labor exploitation in both. 
    
    Mainstream entertainment will be increasingly machine-generated and
    largely derivative. Creativity as a means of connection with another
    human being will no longer be profitable or appreciated - instead,
    machines will turn out infinite quantities of soulless material, often
    customized to the viewer and advertised as "more immersive" and "more
    customized." Communities and fandoms built around mutual enjoyment of
    a thing will be badly harmed as a result, and artists, writers,
    musicians, and programmers will find themselves in the unenviable
    position of being made redundant by machines trained on their creative
    labor. Authorship and copyright (and, by extension, copyleft) will be
    conveniently laundered away for corporate and consumer use. The
    Internet as an open platform will be marginalized or dead; over time
    it will become little more than a collection of siloed services,
    generally accessed through AI-based conversational interfaces owned
    and trained by corporations. 
    
    Among the upper tiers of the employed population, mass automation will
    allow for ever-increasing consumption of consumer goods. A parade of
    new devices and services with pseudo-intelligent capabilities that
    would have seemed miraculous in 2013 will be available, and updated
    frequently. There will be demand for new and extravagant luxuries that
    continues to fuel resource extraction and labor exploitation.
    Ecological collapse will become steadily deeper, but its effects will
    primarily not be visited upon the consumer class. Corporate
    greenwashing, almost entirely focused on carbon-induced climate
    change, will continue to ignore the other problems of overconsumption
    - serious discussion of land and water overuse, deforestation,
    mining-induced pollution, and similar issues will be studiously
    avoided. Even absolute decoupling from carbon emissions will likely
    remain a pipe dream. 
    
    In short, this is a future that will continue to reinforce the
    privileges associated with wealth and power, and will undermine the
    dignity of people. 
    
    
    Human-Scale Computing: Glowing Embers
    -------------------------------------
    
    We don't pretend that we can prevent that future. We're just
    individuals, and not very many of them. What, then, can we do? 
    
    We can create an alternative.
    
    Computing can be more than the ever-growing techno-capitalist
    juggernaut. It can be about things other than speed, or scale. It can
    be about human creation, and human interaction. It can be about people
    finding new and creative uses for old hardware and software. It can be
    about computing as an art, not as a production line. It can be about
    sustainability. It can be about cleverness. It can be about small
    things. 
    
    With that in mind, these are some conclusions we've reached.
    
    * We reject the use of generative learning models outright. We
    furthermore reject any AI development that is driven primarily by
    corporate interests rather than the interests of the people affected
    by it. Any AI development should be respectful of human creativity and
    dignity. 
    
    * We commit to reducing our personal resource footprints, including
    those of consumer goods. We commit to device lifetime extension and
    the circular economy. 
    
    * We strive for repairability, maintainability, and long life for the
    projects we create ourselves. 
    
    * We aim to collaborate with others in a spirit of conviviality before
    reaching for corporate solutions, technologies, and devices. We look
    with interest upon projects - including hardware, software, and
    networks - that have people and their interactions at their center. We
    also welcome and appreciate all forms of human creative expression. 
    
    * We embrace innovative, low-impact solutions to problems - ones
    comprehensible and implementable by human beings working together. 
    
    * We repudiate racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. We work
    toward a convivial technology future that is inclusive of people of
    all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. 
    
    * We accept that we have participated, and participate, in an
    exploitative and destructive system. We look to the future with a
    sincere desire to do better. 
    
    We invite others to work toward a future that respects all people, and
    puts the needs of human beings before those of corporations. We may
    not be able to change the direction of the megacorporations, but we
    can work together to build solutions beyond them - to build an
    alternative technological road together, and to resist the dangerous
    path they have set us upon.
    
    • @Tomato666
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      211 months ago

      Thanks for posting in-line. Very thoughtful read.

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)
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    611 months ago

    This letter embodies what I was hoping for when I chose SDF as my main Fediverse hub. You folks are doing my heart good.

  • @vacuumflower
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    511 months ago

    If we accept that the meaning of the word “capitalism” here is wrong, but differs from what uneducated people use, and that the meaning of the word “corporation” here is correct, but differs from what everybody uses, then I agree with everything in this letter.

    That’s what I dream about in computing anyway.

  • @mariusafa
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    211 months ago

    What should I use to read gopher pages? On Android, from F-Droid if possible. Firefox works with gopher? Lynx does, no? First time I see gopher protocol tbh.