alt Hacker NewsComputers used to have unlimited promise and potential.
then at some point, the balance started tipping.
Things I specifically remember:
- half life required you to register online to install your single-player game from CD
- turbotax would only install on one computer.
- software started rooting around on your system and uploading the findings
- the iphone didn't let you install your own software
- microsoft. enough said.
Replies
At some point, we were the owners of the machine. More importantly, this was normal. We could do whatever we wanted, and the corporations just had to accept it. World changing technology. Limitless potential.
Now it's the opposite. The computers belong to the corporations. They're just generously allowing us to use them, and only in ways that they profit off of. Computers, arguably humanity's most important invention, reduced to interactive television, a mere vehicle for corporate advertsing and surveillance capitalism.
It's truly disgusting. Makes me sad like nothing else.
> Computers used to have unlimited promise and potential.
Imo 90s sci-fi had a lot of this techno optimism, even if the settings were often dystopian. Cyberpunk was pretty wild and who knows a lot of that could still come to pass.
The personal computer is empowering, the thing client connecting to a mainframe isn't.
AI local rigs feel like the pc did in 1980.