I love how the author apologises in advance for her cartoon (“It's not a call to Luddism, I promise”), but every comment is basically: “Yes! Luddism is the answer!”
(I'm a computer programmer and I agree: Luddism is the answer. Also, we need to cut out the middlemen. They're parasites.)
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@josemanuel comments raging about surveillance state failing to see that surveillance isn't a consequence of technology existing. it's about the same with guns not shooting people.
if states wouldn't have transferred money that isn't theirs to a handful of giant conglomerates there still would be new technology developed. voice recognition isn't bad because it's voice recognition. cars calling an ambulance on their own isn't bad, the bad thing is i can't get new ones without this now and that the movement data directly goes to some spook agency to be stored forever.
so i think what deserves some ludditeism is the way these things are designed. there is no reason voice recognition has to go to a server across the globe for example. i played with sphinx on a 800 MHz dual core in like 2015 and it already worked pretty well. same goes for almost everything.
@bonifartius Of course surveillance isn't a consequence of technology existing, that was not the point of the cartoon. The point was that whoever controls technology is not using it for the common good, but to make money, and they make money by surveilling us and exploiting workers.
For instance, delivery food was already a thing in the 1980s. Tech bros didn't invent that. What tech bros did was getting in the middle of it and making money out of both restaurants and clients while paying next to nothing to workers.
When I say Luddism is the answer I mean that we have to fight this state of affairs somehow, and a good way to fight is not to consume their shitty and unnecessary services.
(If this arrives to you, it was because I can't reply to your qoto account for some reason.)
@josemanuel @bonifartius@noauthority.social
in germany there was this service where restaurants could register and people ordered food on. really just a website connecting both parties, i don't think it was extremely expensive for restaurants to participate as well. didn't do any delivery themselves, that all was up to the restaurants.
i agree on not using shitty services, never used streaming subscription myself for example. there somehow is the meme in peoples heads that they have to use certain services to belong to the in-group. i'd blame that on the school system. preaching diversity but if people dare to be different from the current allowed set of things they get hit with the whole force of groupthink. doesn't even have to be something political. back in my day techers had a very strong opinion what the correct pen was (made by the market leader..) and everyone using something different got shit comments from the teacher which the kids of course then did as well. i have no reason to assume it's different now.
something is wonky with qoto (or just my account?).