📑 Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech

Cory Doctorow stops and reflects on technology. He argues that it is not about technology or no technology, but rather what technology. He pushes back on the argument about advertising and suggests that there are wider market forces at play:

In 2018, companies from John Deere to GM to Johnson & Johnson use digital locks and abusive license agreements to force you to submit to surveillance and control how you use their products. It’s true that if you don’t pay for the product, you’re the product – but if you’re a farmer who’s just shelled out $500,000 for a new tractor, you’re still the product.

Although it can be easy to blame the fore-fathers, Doctorow highlights how some of these concerns are not new:

The reality is that these early “techno-utopians” were keenly aware of these risks. They founded organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, not because they were convinced that everything was going to be great – but because they were worried that everything could be terrible, and also because they saw the potential for things to be better.

He closes his piece explaining that we have to fight for and work with technologists for a better future.

Our technology can make our lives better, can give us more control, can give us more privacy – but only if we force it to live up to its promise. Any path to that better future will involve technologists, because no group of people on earth is better equipped to understand how important it is to get there.

For me, this is why I persist with the IndieWeb.

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