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title: 'what-is-a-computer'
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+++ date = "2018-11-20T06:49:43Z" title = "What is a Computer?" +++
Introduction
============
What is a computer?
Most people would answer this question by pointing to a desktop personal
computer gathering dust in an office at home or at work.
This gesture is informed by a very narrow definition of what a computer
is. The truth is that computers are everywhere around us now.
We carry them in our pockets. They control advertisements in the street.
Large, wealthy corporations and the government us computers to listen to
us and in attempts to control us.
Computers only do what their name suggests, \`\`compute'', so why should
there be so many computers around us in our everyday life?
Why do our televisions need computers equipped with microphones, or
maybe even cameras? Why does the internet need to be on all the time?
Why do the advertisements on our smartphones change after we have had a
conversation?
Productivity and the Working Day
================================
The answer is that computers have been introduced into society on a mass
scale as part of an enormous effort to increase the rate of profit under
capitalism. Computers enable humans to be more productive. They also
require humans to be on average less skilled than they used to be fifty
years ago. In place of a skilled tradesperson fifty years ago now stands
a machine.
Labour and union struggles in the 1960s and 1970s fought over how hard
and how long exactly people needed to work under capitalism. This
system-wide struggle that workers waged against the ruling class tried
to shorten the working day that people had to endure, so people could be
free to develop themselves in creative and passionate ways.
But following the onset of neoliberalism, capitalists introduced
computerised machinery, along with the offshoring of jobs, in order to
claw back the time that people had for themselves, to attempt to push up
the rate of profit. And for a time it worked.
A Tool for Production?
======================
So one answer to the question \`\`what is a computer?'' is that it is a
tool for bosses to make profits.
But this is not the whole story. In fact computers are wonderful tool
for ordinary humans to communicate and develop themselves creatively.
All over the world, people are taking back the power of computers to
free themselves from the wage slavery of capitalism. One such example is
the social media network Mastodon, which is a decentralised and
federated network of servers that communicate independently and allow
the flourishing of friendships and communities on the internet.
People in the US are constructing their own mesh networks of long range
wireless computer communication. The same is happening in Catalonia.
People are freeing themselves of the chains of proprietary software by
installing FreeBSD, Linux, or other Free operating systems. These
operating systems are free to download and use for any purpose, unlike
proprietary software, which you often have to continually pay for in
order to keep using -- a form of rent.
Most importantly people are learning to program their computers, as well
as build their own computers at the microprocessor level. These efforts
allow you to have the maximum control possible over your computer
hardware, so that you can free yourself from surveillance and the
arbitrary decisions of bosses.