💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2022 › 202204 › 20220406-economic-woes-and-foss.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:51:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-04-28)
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Many people seem reluctant to invoke the term, but with rising unemployment, stagnant wages, runaway inflation, and significant shortages in all kinds of goods, I can only describe the current economic situation around the world as a recession.
The lack of electronics supplies is particularly notable in a hyper-digital global civilization. In an age where almost everyone in the first world and an increasing percentage of the third world communicate, get news, make purchases, and even handle finances online, access to digital services is more than a luxury--it is fast becoming a right, and one that needs protection. Outside the realm of necessary interactions, the Internet is also where we often find entertainment and relaxation, in the form of videos, articles, video games, and even VR and AR spaces.
Most companies develop these services and spaces with the unspoken assumption that their customers will access them using the latest technology available. In the case of video games in particular, devices more than a few years old are often unable to run the software at all, either due to a lack of horsepower or an intentional lack of compatibility. Web sites implement new designs that require newer technologies and heavier processing. Smartphone apps become bigger, more processor-intensive, and increasingly reliant on device optimizations. Older computers, consoles and smartphones are left in the dust.
These two trends lead to a crunch in tough economic times. There are fewer new devices to buy, and the ones that are available inevitably become more expensive--but customers still feel the push from corporations to buy the new devices, lest they risk losing access to the services they need and the software they enjoy. This not only leads to a potential barrier to accessing essential services online, but it increases the wealth (and social) divide between those who can afford such upgrades and those who cannot.
It seems to me that these circumstances, now more than ever, lead to a ripe opportunity to advocate for free and open-source *ware. Along with the more general movement of digital rights, those who are stuck with older devices due to economic pressures should have the ability to use those devices to their full potential.
More people than ever before have the potential to benefit from FOSS. Tech companies fuel the stratification of wealth classes by making billions off of private information; now is a perfect time to stem the flow of that wealth from the poor to the rich by taking control of our personal data. Proprietary technologies that change at the whim of for-profit consortia cause millions of people to be locked out of de facto public spaces, creating a lower class of netizens; now is a wonderful opportunity to encourage the adoption of open networks and mediums of exchange that are accessible to all. Physical hardware, a type of purchase that fifty years ago would have been expected to last decades, today is understood to be obsolete within five years; now is a good chance to reverse that trend by implementing stable, lightweight information protocols that can be easily backported to old devices and extend their usability.
The insatiable drive for technology to get "bigger and better" has previously been seen by many people as an unavoidable truth about modern society. I think the economic and social disruptions of the last few years could provide an opportunity to change that mindset. We have a chance to show the power of taking control of our tech, and how it can benefit people in everyday life: saving us money, simplifying our digital lives, increasing our privacy, and promoting inclusion in a fair Internet that is open to all.
Of course, such a transition in the way we think about technology can't happen overnight. Profit-driven companies will always fight to villainize technology they can't profit from, while simultaneously attracting people into their walled gardens through endless dopamine triggers and FOMO. We also need to make the case for FOSS clearly and articulately, emphasizing its economic benefits and demonstrating its penchant for bringing people together in constructive ways. We can introduce people to the topic via FOSS frontends for existing platforms, such as NewPipe for YouTube and Nitter for Twitter.
Gemini is a good place to start too. As a text-based protocol, Gemini is perfect for proxying, mirroring or hosting text-based content, such as Wikipedia articles or man pages. Many capsules provide these kinds of services already. On old devices or in areas with poor Internet connections, Gemini provides a simple, open, low-resource method to bring information to users. And with the proliferation of personal blogs, text-based games, and even social media-like services such as Station, Gemini is an excellent platform for entertainment as well.
Now is a better time than ever to encourage our peers to start adopting free and open source technology. It might make weathering our current economic situation a little easier.
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[Last updated: 2022-04-06]