"Charlie Gibbs"  wrote

| > The only hope for General-Purpose Computing is to make
| > it somehow "cool". Otherwise there will soon be nothing
| > but Specialty computers, all produced/owned by the tech
| > giants, designed to only serve their purposes.
|
| Unfortunately, J. Random Luser is easily hypnotized by
| shiny things.  I've heard this referred to as "trout
| management": dangle something shiny with a hook in it
| in front of them and they'll strike every time.

  It's easy to express contempt for non-tech people,
but it's mainly the techies who are hypnotized by video
games. They're mainly the people who got suckered into
"invitations" to gmail. They're the ones pushing the
switch to Chrome, using their phones to pay for things,
supporting unregulated exploitation of workers through
Uber and Lyft, shopping via Amazon, buying crap food
in unrecycled containers via GrubHub or DoorDash...
   You might not be a Facebookie, but if you live by your
phone then you're exploited by either Google or Apple...
plus dataminers. And you're cultivating a lifestyle
mediated by middlemen.

  Why? Because tech hipsters thought it was "cool".
  Lately there's talk of a COVID vaccine cert that will
require a cellphone. Why do we now just assume that
life happens on a cellphone? Instead of selling everyone
a PC, how about putting down your phone.

  There's no reason the general public needs to want
to do programming, video editing, or other things done
on computers. What they need is privacy law. It's just
like everything else. You don't get safe food by teaching
nutrition or safe cars by turning everyone into a mechanic.
You get there with regulation, so that everyone doesn't
need to be an expert.

  On the bright side, Europe has been more advanced than
the US on that score, and Biden seems to be hiring people
who want to break up the tech monopolies. We might get
there. In the meantime, do you watch junk TV? Do you
eat fast food or junk food, or drink sodas? Have you
been suickered into buying designer water? Do you play video
games while being over 16 years old? If so then look in the
mirror to see your trout. There's no super-mind plotting
control over you. There are just confused, power-hungry,
driven people like Bezos and Gates and Jobs and Cook and
Schmidt. And there are their markets. Same thing. You
should regard it as a warning sign when you decide that
somehow you're the only person who thinks for themselves.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05