
The Pendulum Swings, Again - hawke
http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-pendulum-swings-again
======
ReadEvalPost
I know there's a lot of hype around the Raspberry Pi, but it's interesting
that you would mention it as a key component of open systems when it's a
perfect example of half-closed:

* The BCM2835, the microprocessor used on the board, is not available to be purchased by hobbyists

* The full data sheet for the BCM2835 is not available without signing an NDA with Broadcom (and presumably that only happens when you have a commercial application)

* A schematic is available, but not the PCB layout

* The GPU drivers are a binary blob

The Beagleboard and the Arduino are much better examples of open hardware.

~~~
jacquesm
Those are excellent points, when I get home later I'll update the article.
That's a big oversight on my part, thank you.

------
bad_user
The most interesting thing about these recent trends is human nature.

I remember back in year 2000/2001 how everybody was talking about freedom,
open-source and the open nature of the Internet. I remember how the closed
garden that Microsoft tried to create was frowned upon. Small companies that
were picking the Internet as a delivery platform and using open-source/multi-
platform technologies were on the forefront of innovation. Of course regular
consumers and businesses never cared, but as Paul Graham once said, if you
want to see the future trends in computing, you have to look at what hackers
are using today.

Then OS X happened, this UNIX-compatible OS that was shiny and cool and all of
your UNIX tools were compatible with it and you could run some pretty
important proprietary software too, like MS Office or Photoshop. It was more
productive for developers than Windows. Compared to Linux it was friendlier to
all people. And suddenly Apple was hip again and it slowly captured the hearts
of developers.

Then the iPhone happened and people didn't mind that it was a closed garden,
because there has never been anything like it. Anything that Apple allowed on
this new platform, it was taken as a gift, as it was their platform, so if
they wanted to ban an app for "duplicating existing functionality" then
openness be damned, it was their product after all. Then the stories about
lone developers getting rich on the App Store happened, and people didn't mind
being at the behest of Apple, as long as they could have some piece of that
awesome pie.

Of course, countless of reasons were given by tech pundits, trying to
rationalize the walled garden they've created - it is better for grandmas that
have their PCs ridden with viruses, it is better for the protection of our
children, it exposes computing to a wider mass (even though computing in this
context means mostly consumption), it solves the problem of app marketing for
individual developers without huge marketing budgets, etc... there's always
some reason for why Apple was right to act the way it did. Even now that
they've released a shitty GMaps replacement, some genuinely believe that they
had no choice, when for a company like Apple there are always choices
available.

Let's not forget for a moment the ultimate argument against this closed
garden: if you don't like it, you are free to go somewhere else.

And now Apple started suing left and right, which in my opinion is what
companies do when finding themselves in the innovator's dilemma, and is doing
so while dropping the ball on new versions of its products. They are still
successful and they might produce some more golden eggs in the future, but the
innovation frenzy of the iPod era is over and they know it.

And yet people still cheer for them, even though as far as openness is
concerned, Apple makes Microsoft look good. And it was only 12 years ago that
people hated Microsoft with a passion for being an obstacle to innovation,
even though Microsoft never banned any app from running on Windows or
restricted its usage only to certain hardware (but surprise, since Apple has
been doing it so successfully, Microsoft is going to start doing it with
Windows 8 ... hurray for the renewed and totally not evil Microsoft).

I own an Android phone and an iPad. I love my iPad, but it was a gift and I
secretly yearn for a Nexus tablet that has the same size + 3G. I also voted
with my wallet against apps like Instagram, because I'm primarily an Android
user and the aesthetic senses of developers like Marco don't really solve any
my problems.

I also remember the day I got my Galaxy S, even though I owned an iPhone 3GS
... I got out of my way to buy one out of frustration because Apple was
banning apps for blocking calls and SMS messages from specific phone numbers
(but hey, look how it "just works"). And I predict similar frustration levels
as use-cases for my iPad are unfolding. Already I'm pretty pissed off about my
carrier having the ability to enable/disable the tethering option on my iPad.

If this is the future of computing, then I shudder to think of the
consequences.

~~~
api
OSX demonstrates the power of design. Apple is a fashion company. Freedom is
all good, but not if it looks like shit, and pretty much everything but Apple
(at least as of the mid-2000s) looked like shit.

I am pleased with the overall design philosophy direction that Unity and Gnome
3 have taken in abandoning the 90s clutterbuck desktop in favor of something
cleaner and more fluid, but both are immature. But if they can pull it
together, and can be combined with the "ultrabook" movement to make non-Apple
laptops not look like shit, then we might have something.

Also, look into cheap Chinese tablets like the "a-pad." If these could be
flashed to run an open platform, then we'd have something there too.

But the big problem remains design. OSS is very good at innovation and
infrastructure, but is very, very, VERY poor at user experience.

~~~
marklindhout
>> OSS is very good at innovation and infrastructure, but is very, very, VERY
poor at user experience.

I agree with you here. As a designer, I have helped out FLOSS projects with UX
design and usability. However, the environment is such that if you would
suggest UX could be improved, the response often is that devs feel insulted
because you are dissing their code (which is not the case, but they don't see
that).

On the other hand, taking a look at WordPress, they invested quite some time
in user testing and improving UX by professionals, and that makes it one of
the most usable web publishing platforms out there.

So, it would be too easy to say all FLOSS is bad at UX, but most developers
don't even see it as an actual discipline, and hence do not see a problem.

Nicer devs, that's the key :)

~~~
slurgfest
As a designer, I'm sure you recognize that not all feedback from someone who
calls himself a designer is going to have equal quality, and shouldn't
automatically get a pass. Also, you surely must know that a lot of design and
UX critique is highly subjective...

Since you are here, I think you probably also understand that sometimes a
complete redesign amounts to a large quantity of boring work, and that an open
source developer might have set other priorities for future improvement, or
just not see that much return on the time investment relative to other things
which remain to be done.

The word for someone who is really nice to you and changes the whole project
at your whim is 'employee' or 'contractor.' If I devised and have worked on an
OSS project for years and some guy comes out of the blue basically saying that
I should reallocate months of free labor in order to make something to someone
else's tastes, can you not see why that would be the sort of suggestion I
would take with a big grain of salt?

------
kintamanimatt
_Those who lived through that period and paid attention are probably well
aware of the ridiculous notion that information flows should be controlled in
order to protect the children or whatever the fig-leaf of the day is. Ask the
Iranian and the Chinese people how they like their firewalls._

 _Let’s make sure it ends up on the side of freedom and democracy, and not on
the side of DRM and other forms of control and digital oppression._

 _If my observations are correct then such a swing is about to happen, and
this time we had better get it right._

The author states the concern and the desirable outcome, but how do we,
individually, make sure the pendulum swings in the correct direction?

~~~
RobAley
The simplest way is through the use of your wallet. Buy "open". E.g.

\- Need a new desktop? Buy one that doesn't lock down uefi by default, and
runs linux compatible hardware

\- New phone? Buy one with Firefox OS if you can wait that long, or at least
go for one with a stock Android install

\- New book? Buy one from independent publishers/authors who don't support DRM
[1]

\- New app? Don't use a commercial app store, get it direct from the publisher

\- Music? you get the idea.

Voting with your wallet and putting money on the side of open helps keep
commercial operators swinging in that direction. As far as government is
concerned, I've no idea.

[1] Swift plug : <http://leanpub.com> for books, in particular
<http://leanpub.com/php> ....

[edit] In response to the assorted "we're too small a minority" comments
below, I would argue that historically with IT that isn't an issue. The
internet & web were minority pursuits at one point, commercial walled gardens
like AOL were much more common and popular, until the small minority of tech
leaders (just like us) forged ahead anyway and showed with our feet how much
better it can be. The people reading HN, while comparatively small in number
compared to the general population, I think underestimate the power they (and
others like them) have to influence the tech lives of their customers, users,
friends and family. It doesn't always appear that common sense can beat big
money when it comes to affecting the choices made by the general populous, but
have some faith in your fellow humanity, these sways are usually only
temporary.

~~~
mikecane
>>>New book? Buy one from independent publishers/authors who don't support DRM
[1]

You must have forgotten the raging battle between Doctorow and the
eBookstores. He and his publisher didn't want DRM, but the stores _did_. This
is part of the point the writer is making about the pendulum swinging.

~~~
RobAley
Indeed. Lets amend that to "publishers/authors/stores". Many authors and/or
publishers are letting you buy direct from their own sites as well as at
mainstream ebookstores, so there is often that choice. Again, see [1]

~~~
mikecane
eBooks are my thing. The number of writers selling direct isn't even a
rounding error. And if publishers were doing so well on their own, they'd have
dropped all the other stores to increase their takes.

~~~
RobAley
You're entirely right, but I think you're missing the point. This thread is
about how to we change the current situation, i.e. how to effect which way the
needle swings. There is enough of an acorn in the number of authors and
publishers that do sell direct online (and stores that don't support DRM) that
it is something we can build on by supporting them. The question asked is what
can we do, not what has already been done.

[Edit] Also, to clarify, the number of authors selling direct (or via new
style lean publishers) is more than a rounding error. The number of popular
authors probably isn't. But WHO the popular authors are is not static, and my
gut feeling is you will see that rapidly change if the needle swings the way
we hope it does. And remember than, bestsellers aside, there is a very long
tail in publishing (particularly e-publishing).

------
MatthewPhillips
It's an interesting view of history, but without providing your reasoning for
why you think the pendulum is about to swing again I have to assume that it is
not.

~~~
rolux
I agree. While I can follow the author's reasoning about the history of
computing (particularly his assertion that computing was most democratic in
the 1980s), he doesn't reveal the sources for his optimism, apart from
stating:

 _If my observations are correct then such a swing is about to happen, and
this time we had better get it right._

The interesting part, which is missing, would be a list of such observations.

~~~
mikecane
The iPad being seen as a store for Apple. The Kindles being seen as a store
for Amazon. The Nook being seen as a store for Barnes & Noble. Those are just
three too damned obvious examples that are totally against the grain of the
history of computing he -- and I -- lived through. That's part of the pendulum
right there.

Also, writers and publishers and musicians _not_ wanting DRM but the stores --
Apple, Amazon, et al -- insisting on it. Another pendulum swing. You wind up
not even having total control over _your own product_.

Fake DRM takedowns to stifle competition (see the Vinted thing with
Kickstarter).

The battle over whether GPS tracking does or doesn't require a court order.

All the evidence is out there and I'm surprised any of you need someone else
to create such a list.

And, shit, I'm a writer and I now want to learn JavaScript because I think
something like Open webOS (or the Mozilla OS) is the future we'll all be
running towards for technological self-defense and freedom. The path we're
currently on is a noose that can hang all of us.

~~~
a_c_s
But there is no DRM for music in Apple's store (it was dropped entirely in
2009), and Amazon sells DRM free music too.

------
protomyth
I think the article misses one of the fundamental reasons that mobile is a
closed environment: fear. It seems we treat things we can put in our pocket as
more personal and much different than the twilight zone we expect out of
computers.

I am sure, at some point, a program uploaded the Outlook address book of some
Fortune 500 sales manager to the internet without telling him/her. Any problem
or security breach in the PC world is a 1-day story.

The same thing happens on a mobile platform (iPhone) and C-level executives
are dragged in front of Congress. I gotta tell you, if its a choice between
programmer's rights and being dragged in front of Congress because some
startup didn't use proper hashing, I would, as a CEO, limit programmers. Pure,
simple, and a smart decision for 99.9% of my customers. I will bet if Google
has more executives "requested" at Congressional Hearings then side-loading
will disappear.

The post-PC devices are going to be locked down in the name of security. There
is no downside to executives. Some developers will put up with it because of
the money just like they did in the pre-iPhone days of mobile deployment.

I hate this because I know if I'd been born 20 years later, I would not be a
developer. High Schools are not teaching programming anymore and the computers
I learned to program on (Atari 400, C64, TI 99/4A) have no modern replacements
(sub $200 with development tools included / available cheap).

Someone wants to change all this? Then build a modern day Atari 800 / C64. Not
OLPC, because you cannot just buy one of those. Something I can hook to the
internet and an old TV (since now most families have bought the 2nd generation
of HDMI devices). Something that lets me program it.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
_Then build a modern day Atari 800 / C64._

Isn't that what Raspberry Pi is? A very simple, understandable, eminently
hackable computer?

That does make me wonder: if I could get 35-40 of them for my kids' high
school, would they put them to use? Or would three be as valuable as 40, since
only the kids who are like I was would care?

~~~
protomyth
No, Raspberry Pi is a board. You don't hand people a motherboard and expect
them to learn to program.

~~~
akldfgj
Ctrl-Shift-C in Chrome, or Ctrl-Shift-J in Firefox, will give you a
programmable computing environment more powerful and expressive than a 20-year
old Atari, Commodore, or Apple.

~~~
protomyth
Which means I have to have a computer already which is not < $200. Also, I
really doubt I can use Firefox or Chrome to hook up some photocells to the
machine and take readings or use the photocells as a musical instrument.

------
kamme
The most interesting fact for this swing is that it's not only software that
is changing...

As noted in the article: if you wanted a computer in the old days, you put it
together yourself. That changed and putting together a new computer yourself
is unimaginable (I'm not speaking about assembly of components, but soldering
the whole thing). Recently cheap(er) 3D printing, Arduino and the Raspberry Pi
put hardware on the table again and I think very interesting times are coming.
Think about it, even 2 or 3 years ago 'innovation' on the internet was synonym
with software, now it's changing again to hard- and software.

~~~
ivix
Not at all. Hardware is becoming more and more obscure. 5 years ago many
people could and did swap components in their PC. Now try doing that with a
modern smartphone or laptop.

Don't confuse the chatterings online about RPi etc with any kind of general
movement. The vast majority of computer users now use sealed hardware boxes,
and that proportion is increasing.

~~~
rolux
_5 years ago many people could and did swap components in their PC. Now try
doing that with a modern smartphone or laptop._

Do you think this is an entirely new development? Wouldn't the statement "5
years ago people could do X with computers, now they can't" in fact hold true
for the last, say, 40 years in the history of computing?

~~~
chii
But the argument here is about the specific property of black boxes.

Computers in the olden days tend not to be hermetically sealed black boxes.

------
snooblywoobly
I think the comments on hacker news, in general, need to be a little more
tolerant of ambiguity. Just because a statement is not immediately verifiable
or is imprecise, it does not mean that it is without worth. The scientific
method is a way of verifying our intuition, it is not in and of itself the one
true route to all knowledge.

------
rsync
Before you worry about the pendulum of mobile app ecosystems, perhaps it's
worth stepping back a few layers of abstraction, and look at the pendulum of
the physical, human-human interface layer.

None of us own our own real property (property tax) - you don't even own your
own car (required registration fees even for "planned nonoperation"). You
(likely) don't create any of your own food, and are bound by law to carry and
present ID.

So ... what ? We build our perfect little RMS style open computing world,
while we are renters and debtors at the lower layers of our "societal stack".

------
trg2
_Those who lived through that period and paid attention are probably well
aware of the ridiculous notion that information flows should be controlled in
order to protect the children or whatever the fig-leaf of the day is. Ask the
Iranian and the Chinese people how they like their firewalls._

Well played, sir.

------
kris_lander
Whilst the article mentions how countries like China restrict access to
communication networks we should be under no illusions that nearly all major
communication networks are ultimately still under the control of central
government wherever you live. For the pendulum to permanently swing in favour
of "freedom and democracy" we need a genuinely open network. Without an open
network open devices, operating systems, software, etc could easily be
neutered, if albeit in a rather draconian fashion by hitting the "off" switch.
This can seem unlikely in any "free" nation, however this was almost a reality
last year during the London riots. As those in power openly lamented the use
of Blackberry's BBM network by the rioters (and various other communication
networks) it was clear that the government came very close to ordering the
service shutdown and I have no doubt it would have been had things
deteriorated any further. Perhaps the great next swing might be those
attempting to create decentralized mesh networks? One can hope.

~~~
nacker
I agree 100%! This is the main point that the article misses.

Open hardware and open software are completely useless if the networks are not
open. The open internet as we know it would _never have happened_ unless it
had been provided by thousands of tiny ISPs. The most worrying pendulum swing
of all is the consolidation of all traffic into a few giants like Comcast per
country.

Mesh networking is the next frontier for openness.

------
benjamincburns
Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club [1] represent! Back in 2006 I
started a similar project to TuxPhone that I dubbed OpenCell [2]. I'd been
working with GSM modules for a while, and my motivation was "This WinMo phone
I have sucks. I sure do hate carrying around a cell phone, MP3 player, and
camera all the time - I know I could build one device that'd just do it all."

Unfortunately as a student I didn't have the funds to see this to the point of
reality, and the iPhone was launched in January 2007, essentially making my
effort look like a steaming pile of shit. That said, technology has come a
long, long way since then. 3D printing, inexpensive reflow soldering
equipment, and stacked DDR packages make this goal pretty attainable compared
to when I launched my efforts. I'd love, love, love to see efforts like this
revived.

    
    
      [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Homebrew_Mobile_Phone_Club
      [2]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080927003526/http://widgetry.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

------
rolux
_Remember that there are two possible outcomes, one where the internet
successfully manages to cause a swing to the edge of freedom, and another
where it is successfully co-opted by big money and governments in a concerted
effort to give us all a subscription to online Life-As-A-Service where you
will be beholden to some party for the ability to gain access to knowledge,
information, the right to communicate and so on and where the act of
programming will be as tightly regulated as the export of cryptography was._

It seems so me that in the 1990s, the future that was widely (outside some
truly dystopian sci-fi fringes of the net discourse) regarded as the worst-
case scenario was the Internet becoming like radio -- i.e. another peer-to-
peer medium turned into a broadcast medium. So it may be worth noting that
while the best-case scenario hasn't changed much since then, the worst-case
scenario has.

~~~
justinmk
> you will be beholden to some party for [...] the right to communicate

This is the most poignant insight in the article. For some decades now, it has
been accepted--with minimal opposition--that we are beholden to some party
(the state) for _the right to travel_. Then it is not far-fetched to imagine
that in some decades, the _right to communicate_ may be popularly regarded as
a mere "privilege" which is granted by the generosity of the state. We accept
random searches at airports, centralized driver licensing, red light cameras,
etc. The legislature already flirts with the digital equivalents of those
concepts.

~~~
gaius
That is why the Founding Fathers were opposed to the idea of a Bill of Rights.
Because they knew people would come to believe their rights were granted by
the document, instead of merely being non-exhaustively listed in it.

------
jonnathanson
The relative ubiquity of the internet is an important consideration here. In
previous swings of the pendulum, computing (and/or the internet) was
concentrated among a much smaller base of users, many of whom had strongly
vested interests in the side to which the pendulum was swinging.

These days, the internet is certainly ubiquitous, and "smart" mobile devices
are basically ubiquitous, if not yet entirely so. And the vast majority of
_today's_ users don't seem to care about privacy, open vs. closed ecosystems,
etc. The sheer volume of users who either don't know, or don't care, about
these things shifts a LOT of power into the hands of the current power players
in the status quo. Hackers and power users are still major forces for change,
and always will be. And, in time, they may prevail by offering better
solutions to the masses. But the weight of the masses is heavier than it ever
has been.

I submit that the fulcrum on which the hackers will tilt the masses isn't
security, privacy, or anything of that nature. It's openness, and by proxy, IP
management. It's the free transmission (or lack thereof) of ideas,
information, and content. It's the interoperability (or lack thereof) of all
of these things between devices and systems, outside the restrictions or
central control of one or two major parties.

But the force currently arrayed against the growth of openness is a powerful
one. It's convenience. And convenience is, arguably, THE most powerful driver
in human psychology. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, telecoms, and other
players in the content space are making plays to become total-solution
providers. And the appeal of a one-stop, total solution (the Walmart Effect,
if you will) is quite powerful to the masses. To overcome this appeal, the
next great disruption will need to equate openness with convenience. Open must
= easy. More precisely, open must be more highly correlated with ease than
walled gardens are correlated with ease.

An historical side note:

AOL's monopoly in the ISP game, which lasted for so many years, came about
because AOL offered the easiest, most idiot-proof, and most convenient
internet experience. It was a walled garden, but beyond the wall, the typical
user just saw a massive, untamed jungle full of complex systems, wonky
communities, and seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties. AOL fell
when people figured out how to make the world outside the wall more ordered,
more appealing, and more uniformly approachable. Open standards had a lot to
do with this. So did the appearance of portals, which represented a less
daunting half-step between the Great Untamed Wild and the AOL garden. And
search engines continued this evolution, making the point of entry into most
users' internet experience very centralized, orderly, and convenient _without_
walling everything up. Search engines created the subconscious appearance of a
walled garden without actually erecting walls.

~~~
iamwil
"To overcome this appeal, the next great disruption will need to equate
openness with convenience. Open must = easy. More precisely, open must be more
highly correlated with ease than walled gardens are correlated with ease."

I agree with this, but I'm not sure how it'd happen.

Open source has been really good for things that are infrastructure, or common
building blocks. However, it's not been so good for things at the top of the
stack, like applications. Design by committee is no design at all.

If Apple's done anything right, it's brought design to the forefront of a lot
of people's thought as a driving force for innovation (and to a lesser extent,
Ruby, with its focus on programmer happiness, which is language design)

But even then, most open source software focuses on getting it to work first,
and figures that someone else will come along to help later. The most usable
projects are the ones that decide from the beginning to focus on usability.

In addition, some people probably feel, "Hey, I'm giving this away for free
already, and you're complaining about usability? You go fix it."

And are there open source designs? Twitter bootstrap is the only one I'm aware
of. Dribbble is the closest, but there, they're not sharing design, in the
sense of "hey you can use this too", but in the sense of "I'll show off to
'inspire' you"

~~~
jonnathanson
I agree, but I think it can be done. The early "outside AOL" internet was less
well designed, more haphazard, etc. What eventually pulled people out of AOL
and into the metaphorical wild was all the riches that could be found there,
and found easily and painlessly (getting to that latter step was the key).
Both literally, from a business-opportunity standpoint, and figuratively, from
a consumer-enjoyment standpoint. There was more to gain outside the walls of
the AOL garden, and so people were (eventually) willing to step outside the
comfortable, reasonably well-designed walls and explore it. And they started
exploring it when it became easy to find and easy to access.

Apple has done a phenomenal job creating a design-forward, UX-optimized,
sparklingly walled garden. But I believe that a richness of content, easily
accessed and easily used, can lure people outside.

Two things need to happen: 1) more entrepreneurs need to be convinced that the
big rewards are outside the walls, and 2) the things they create will need to
lure people out there. We _may_ need a third factor, like the one Yahoo and
eventually Google performed for the nascent WWW, which was to add the easy-
access layer on top of it all.

Full disclosure: I used to work at Apple, I greatly admire them, and I bear no
ill will toward them at all. But I _am_ a big proponent of the open internet,
and I believe that the arc of history will bend back toward it eventually.

------
stevewilhelm
During the entire period of time the author discusses, most of your critical
information has been stored in proprietary, walled gardens: your health
records, financial transactions, telephone communication records, etc.

If anything, it is getting worse. For example, if one has a cable "triple
play" package: all of your web surfing, phone calls & SMS, and television
viewing history is recorded and owned by one company.

The fact that the edge devices are "open" is moot.

------
__Joker
The freedom we got was a by product or say side effect of computing
pheonemenon rather that we actively sought it. I don't think people en masse
would like the freedom right now. Most of the people will be happy with the
service vs. privacy-freedom compromise we are getting today. I don't want to
belabour the point of Google as service and Apple as service.

------
alexro
If tomorrow the government suggested to licence software businesses so that if
a consumer had trouble with a program or a website the responsible party would
get in trouble, 99% of the population would vote it up. So much about everyone
wanting to keep stuff open.

For the most education means getting a place in the vertical, not being
curious. So far as everyone else is limited, 99% won't have a problem with it.
iProduct and facebook are the obvious examples.

How do we keep it our way? The only answer I'm having is: by becoming
billionaires and putting the money to work for the "open" ignoring any other
commercial incentives.

------
genbattle
This may just be me picking on one small part of the entire post, but I have a
serious technical problem with some of the author's claims, not least of which
is his feelings that FPGAs will somehow revolutionize personal computing.

Anyone who has programmed with an FPGA will understand the sort of tasks
they're best for; hand-optimizing particular algorithms and processes into
parallel pipelines and execution units.

Running a general-purpose OS on a CPU built in software on top of an FPGA is
just not feasible; the yeild of transistors to logic units is very low for
FPGAs compared to conventional microprocessors; and there's matters of
efficiency, layout, and cost-effectiveness to think of. There has been some
success using an FPGA-type programmable gate array in combination with a
standard CPU, but the CPU itself is usually a proprietary core made to
coordinate and assist the FPGA. These sorts of FPGA co-processors are only
ever used for very specialized aplications currently. They won't be replacing
general-purpose dedicated CPUs anytime soon (if ever).

FPGAs are perfectly suitable for any special-purpose functions they've been
programmed for: but I think in terms of desktop and mobile computing, having a
farm of parallel execution units in the form of a modern GPU will also yield
acceptable results for any parallel consumer applications without the need for
as much investment as with dedicated reprogrammable FPGA hardware.

The other technical concern I have is mesh networks; we don't currently have
the technology to create and maintain large-scale mesh networks, but even if
we did, there is a point there the communication required just to maintain the
network outpaces the node-to-node bandwidth, or even the global bandwidth
available. You also have to deal with privacy concerns around data storage and
transmission at nodes while it is en-route to a destination, and circle-of-
trust issues, etc. These issues bring the pendulum in a full circle.

I agree that the pendulum does seem to be in a state of change at the moment,
and all that is keeping it from swinging back (and probably giving it more
overall momentum in the progress) is government and business interests.

I think the issues we face, and that we have always faced, are not so much
technical as they are social and societal. By the time we solve the issues
around the commons, ownership, and governance; the technical issues will seem
trivial.

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creat0
I fail to see a qualitative difference between "mobile", "laptop", "desktop"
or "stovetop". Those are just form factors. They are all computers. We can put
a computer inside almost anything nowadays. What matters to me besides what's
on the motherboard are peripherals, drivers and access to networks.

Things got smaller. We all knew they would. But they should not become less
functional. (Hello Apple.)

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bloaf
_a similar thing using hardware had happened in the 80’s with so called
‘dongles’, typically for expensive programs such as CAD software_

I can think of at least one software package which still uses physical
dongles.

