This article will be a little different to my usual blog posts. Normally I focus on talking about my projects and tech that I find interesting. I write because it's fun. This one is a kind of therapy. So sorry in advance for the rant, and I'll return to the regularly scheduled techposting shortly.
When I look at the state of computer operating systems today it depresses me. But more than that, it scares me. Mobile devices are locked down walled gardens, perfect golden, optimised prisons where all you can do is consume, and never create.
When I was a child, my parents got me a low-spec emachines PC running Windows XP. On that machine I could experiment, play games, install mods, make mods. I didn't even have an internet connection but I could paste my friends' faces onto the houndeyes in Half-Life, because I had the power to just open the folder and edit the files. That anonymous forgotten celeron nurtured in me the spark of creativity which has become central to my own perception of self. Its legacy now lives in the core of my being. I create things, and I do it - not exclusively, but largely - with computers. This DEFINES me in a profound way.
When I think how this process would evolve today it evokes in me a deep dread, even grief. What is the first computer of a 13 year old kid these days? An iPhone? Android? Locked down prisons suitable only for watching tiktok and CONSUMING more and more and more and never stopping to think, never creating anything, never questioning your latest overconsumptive impulse purchase. And when they do get a quote unquote "real computer" what is it? Probably a school mandated chromebook, basically a glorified flip-phone.
Oh but I don't need to worry. I still have a real computer. I can run linux, develop software, and bypass the safety measures imposed on the ignorant masses because I have the technical comptency to do so. I'm part of the exclusive club, so I'll be ok. But that's only part of the solution. I don't want to live in an ivory tower with my fellow elite computer engineers, scoffing at the peasants below grubbing for morsels, blind, afraid and utterly incapable of controlling a huge and growing chunk of their lives.
I want to live in a world where a curious child can learn and develop a passion for computing. A world where the programs they use as a child aren't broken unusable crap a few years later when the next OS version deprecates and then removes the APIs it used. A world where every clever hack to integrate with other tools and systems isn't blocked in the name of security. A world where a hobbyist can publish software for others without needing to register a business and pay a subscription for a code signing key just to avoid being automatically removed from users' devices when they dare attempt downloading software outside the walled gardens. A world where normal people can create and share, and build an inclusive culture around that.
What use is security if we grind down the experience of computing until it loses all meaning? We're building a padded cell and the security engineers are cheering it on. 1% less Grandmas scammed out of their inheritance, but at what cost? If nobody but the corpo overlords can make new things, what will happen to us? Where will the innovative new ideas come from? A whole culture of creativity and innovation just dies.
The last bastion of hope at the moment is Windows. The FOSS supporters among you might balk at that, but it's the truth. It's the last system a normal person will encounter in their day to day life that gives them a chance to experiment and learn. And who knows how long it will stay that way? Market forces are certainly pushing them towards the same sandboxed, walled garden approach the rest of the industry has so enthusiastically adopted.
What I want is not just a world where professionals can make computers work for them, that will always be the case. Someone has to make the ecommerce apps. I want a world where the default experience of a normal child is to be empowered. Many households don't even have a PC at home at all anymore. Their only technological links are smartphones, pure consumption devices. To use a computer, especially for programming, is the purest form of creation that man has ever dreamed up. I imagine what I want and through sheer force of will, manifest that vision in reality. I am not a religious man, but if that is not the power of a god then I don't know what is.
By continually widening the gap between programmers and users, we are gatekeeping apotheosis, and, to put it mildly, I think we should stop.
That was all rather alarmist wasn't it? I know things are not as bad as I described, yet. What depresses me is that we seem to be sliding in that direction with no way to stop. I don't have the political power to stop it. Hell, even the CEOs of big tech companies probably don't, the process seems to have an inertia of its own. I generally try to live my life with an optimistic viewpoint, but this really scares me. I don't know what the hell to do about it.