Item — HN Reader

You are not alone. I suspect some of the strongest opponents of "technology" are now "technologists", i.e. people who work in technology can be the most opposed to what the general public see as technology.

In my view it isn't the technology that is "evil", it is the monetisation of the technology, or more specifically the people behind the monetisation of it.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying how disappointed I am with how the internet has turned out, for example. From the initial optimism around things like "information want to be free" and "disintermediation" we have moved to "When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive" and the "reintermediation" of the big internet giants.

And I have a terrible feeling that in a decade or two we'll see something similar with some of the new technologies we're getting excited about now. For example, blockchain and cryptocurrrencies facilitate an "the internet of money" with e.g. frictionless cross border transactions, but could in future end up allowing authorities to track every transaction by every person.

So what can we do about it?

1 comments

I'm a web developer and I agree with all that's been said here, especially the "reintermediation" bit.

It has become clear to me as well that the web is no longer what it used to be and will probably never return to what it was, because of these monetization practices. I am interested in finding out what the "next" web will be. Maybe it will be built on existing protocols, and maybe something else entirely?

There are also certain web-focused techs and companies I see as being bastions of the "old way," such as Wordpress and Ruby on Rails, and I'd like to get more involved in preserving and promoting those techs in a professional setting.

I'm also interested in walking back some of these misguided monetization tactics you speak of. Programmatic CPM-based ad networks are one of those I'd like to see reversed.

I feel that we as developers often underestimate the collective influence we have as technology experts. We are the creators of tech; our culture is essentially tech culture. Do Google and Facebook have the power they have because we give them that power? If so, what do we get in return?

> I feel that we as developers often underestimate the collective influence we have as technology experts. We are the creators of tech; our culture is essentially tech culture. Do Google and Facebook have the power they have because we give them that power? If so, what do we get in return?

They have the power precisely because they have the capital. If all of the rich people who don't need to work banded together to work on open source and federated technologies that would be great. But the rest of us need to work and can't challenge our employers politics in any meaningful way.