Richard Stallman was largely motivated to start project GNU because he took issue with the appropriation of source code by corporations and other proprietors, which he saw as replacing the communal way of writing and consuming software at the MIT A.I. lab.
My feeling is that we are seeing today a similar appropriation, not of source code (most people who use computers at this point now see them as appliances, and wouldn't have any use for source code), but of the ability to embed externally imposed media within (and subservient to) our own private scheme of organization. Let me explain: in the old days, when you subscribed to a magazine, you admittedly would be forced to navigate it so long as you read it, but you would be free to place it and store it anywhere you like in your house, and even cut clippings out from it and rearrange them as you may. But computers are not just appliances when used as such, but instead become giant magazines which overtake the role of your entire house and mind.
We really don't have the equivalent capability to organize things as we please in smartphones, and people are using such capability less and less in desktops (and not at all so long as they only use the PC as a glorified web browser). Ted Nelson thought about the kind of organizational tools the user would need to have at his/her hands, and John McCarthy wrote about it a bit too (e.g., look for discussion here on HN in other threads about his paper, "The Home Information Terminal: A 1970 View", in which he points out that because people will control what they see, online advertising, for example, wouldn't even be possible).
As with other systems of control, my feeling is that you're not going to peacefully overthrow it so long as a large enough segment of the population is in fact perfectly happy with it, or at least unaware of any reason not to be. John McCarthy admitted this much when he conceded that most Americans are TV watchers anyway and won't need a home information terminal to do research, and Neil Postman wrote about the negative effects of television in his 1984 book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death".
> John McCarthy admitted this much when he conceded that most Americans are TV watchers anyway and won't need a home information terminal to do research, and Neil Postman wrote about the negative effects of television in his 1984 book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death".
Zooming out just a little, Guy Debord's "Society Of The Spectacle" talks about this same stuff on a higher level.
My feeling is that we are seeing today a similar appropriation, not of source code (most people who use computers at this point now see them as appliances, and wouldn't have any use for source code), but of the ability to embed externally imposed media within (and subservient to) our own private scheme of organization. Let me explain: in the old days, when you subscribed to a magazine, you admittedly would be forced to navigate it so long as you read it, but you would be free to place it and store it anywhere you like in your house, and even cut clippings out from it and rearrange them as you may. But computers are not just appliances when used as such, but instead become giant magazines which overtake the role of your entire house and mind.
We really don't have the equivalent capability to organize things as we please in smartphones, and people are using such capability less and less in desktops (and not at all so long as they only use the PC as a glorified web browser). Ted Nelson thought about the kind of organizational tools the user would need to have at his/her hands, and John McCarthy wrote about it a bit too (e.g., look for discussion here on HN in other threads about his paper, "The Home Information Terminal: A 1970 View", in which he points out that because people will control what they see, online advertising, for example, wouldn't even be possible).
As with other systems of control, my feeling is that you're not going to peacefully overthrow it so long as a large enough segment of the population is in fact perfectly happy with it, or at least unaware of any reason not to be. John McCarthy admitted this much when he conceded that most Americans are TV watchers anyway and won't need a home information terminal to do research, and Neil Postman wrote about the negative effects of television in his 1984 book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death".