Two of my favorite, and few apart, critical voices in tech Cory Doctorow (guest) and Ed Zitron (host) get their ping pong on in this Better Offline podcast.

The podcast in general delivers, too. Annoyingly add-ridden but that’s about it. Good stuff.

Be ready on the skip button though, in the quality-of-information direction (too). That’s just a consequence of Cory Doctorow’s mind, spirit and scope of reflection.

My main takeaway soapbox (on a single point Cory made)

A computer can run any program by design - that is actually exactly what a computer is. Anytime your device cannot do that it has been throttled, made into less than a computer, by an organization with an agenda for your behaviour. You are not using a computer anymore, at all. You are using a piece of software.

Those two things - a computer and a piece of software - are different to the point of completely different things. The difference is hard-to-impossible to discern for the end-user and impossible to overstate or un-see.

A computer can do anything you want. Closed-source software is a black-box tool with properties that change over time* in accord with the goals of its creator.

In the case of corporate ownership, purely value extraction. From you, personally. You don’t necessarily notice anything when getting robbed if the robber is skilled enough.

In the case of an individual coder (aka you) or group of coders (aka open-source) purely to improve the usability of the tool.


*) Hard to fathom using a tool that changes between your hands, except watch those fingers.

LINKS

Cory Doctorow’s blog

Brian Merchant’s book “Blood in the Machine”

Blood in the Machine Newsletter (substack)

Download episode MP3