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Ignoring his ramblings, but saying what I think will be important:

Control. The problem with technological advances today aren't with the tech itself, it's that the burst of consumer users allowed people like apple to turn computing into a user prison where the user has no control. This then set a standard, and many people have grown up without ever using a free and open source piece of software.

So AR and VR and AI and virtual assistants etc, the main problem is always going to go back to the root of why RMS started GNU in the first place; because he saw the future of tech was a fight for control of the user. He was just a man ahead of his time and socially awkward enough that it was and is easy to dismiss him based on what are essentially ad hominem attacks.

The future I want is FOSS/FOSH, regardless of the tech!



The dream of open source isn't any closer to being realized than it has ever been. Open source enthusiasts tend to overlook the fact that most people don't want control. Control is difficult to handle and requires a lot more energy and effort than ceding the control to another entity.

This isn't strictly a terrible thing. Anyone who has chosen to share their life with a partner gets that it is a lot easier if you divide up control of different aspects of your life among each other.

The problem is - as a society in general, and as tech consumers in particular, who should we cede the control to and how should the controllers be held accountable?

These are the same problems societies have faced for millennia, and now that newly emerging tech can operate at the scale of society in a couple of years, it is unreasonable to expect that billions of people adopt the libertarian mindset when it comes to tech alone.


So then the greater holy war is to make control easier and more friendly so that more people desire it.




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