The current (digital) Dark Age

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Over the past few years, it's gradually occurred to me that we're in the midst of a new Dark Age.

The previous one was in the Middle Ages, when commoners lived in ignorance and fear, and the Roman Catholic Church terrorised and exploited the credulity and superstition of masses for its to consolidate its power, and became the richest entity in history (up to that time). The power of the Church was based in large part on the fact that they had common motivations - the literacy of the clergy gave them the means to pass on knowledge,  to communicate effectively, and organise themselves. RCC leaders ruled as autocrats, and their power was supported by the priesthood, who stood above the commoners with their elite code of Latin. Literate monks - the kindly, studious, high-aptitude socially awkward nerds of their day - beavered away on tasks assigned them by their anointed masters in rarefied monasteries, writing histories, translating holy texts, awaiting suitable inspiration to interpret the word of God, and tinkering with things (alchemy, beer, foosball tables).

Today, we have much the same situation, where digital literacy is concerned. Today, however, the role of the RCC is played by the combined force of the "Frightful Five", which wield far more power collectively than any individual nation, and their wealth is unprecedented. Their C-Suites and marketing teams form the autocratic clergy, and developers are the literate but subordinate monks. Most computer users are almost completely illiterate serfs with regard to the devices on which they depend both for social interaction and their livelihoods. They tend to veer towards superstition and learned helplessness rather than taking the initiative to gain their literacy.

They've been deemed capable of no self-reliance greater than the "3 finger salute" (CTRL+ALT+DEL) - the (equally ineffectual) "hail Mary" of the digital era - to help themselves.

If you are in the situation in which your livelihood depends one or more of the Frightful Five, or even, perish the thought , you're employed by one of them, I'd strongly encourage you to have good hard think on whether that amounts to complicity. Many have allowed themselves to become indentured servants to them, one way or another, doing their bidding because they feel they no other choice. It must be a horrible feeling.

I wonder if there will ever be a second enlightenment. I imagine that there were educated individuals back in the Middle Ages who recognised the dire and unjust situation and worked surreptitiously, with minimal resources and at great risk to themselves, to help small groups learn to read so that they could attain an understanding of their lot, and aspire to more...  I imagine that the Enlightenment finally arrived fairly suddenly, when those quiet stalwarts and their clandestine learners coalesced with the catalyst of the printing press and the bible being published in the vernacular democratising knowledge, and achieved a tipping point. 

Today, though there are many among us who similarly foment pockets of digitally informed from among illiterate masses, remarkably few people seem willing to pursue their own digital salvation, to throw off the yoke of their Frightful digital oppressors... Most, having never experienced anything else, fail to even recognise their oppression ("oh, it's so user friendly - the marketing tells us so!"), thinking it's simply the "way things are" and accepting their fates, simply bumbling about, flotsam and jetsam on the digital tides, hoping to muddle through.

Here's hoping humanity can surprise us all by again reaching a tipping point, and initiating an age of digital enlightenment, characterised by enabled communities, where self-reliance and empowerment are championed ("the user is the developer) rather than sneered at by the fearful, insecure masses. That goal is my calling.

And to those of you who, like me, find countless useful articles online that someone has taken the time to write (usually after learning a particularly hard lesson) and saved me from the same fate by doing so, I encourage you to hold them up as the unassuming paragons of virtue and kind humanity they are.

Better still, emulate them.

We cannot now thank those selfless heroes who fomented the first (analogue) enlightenment for their vision, commitment, compassion, and effort... Sadly, many of them would've come to an unbearably horrible end on the Inquisitor's rack, or burnt at the stake, or suffering a final embrace with an iron maiden for challenging (a non-existent) God's will (as very capriciously interpreted by horrible human beings).

Those who are now fomenting the digital enlightenment are quietly demonstrating themselves to be the best among us. They are the ones who give me my faith in the goodness of people. Take the opportunity to thank them when you can and, if possible, assist them in their work rather than standing in their way. 

Update 2021-02-16: hah! Only just realised that I've written about this previously - must've been sleep-blogging :) 'cause I plum forgot.

Comments

Started to notice it in 2005/6 acted on it in 2008 but took me 2 years to remove myself from the sweetness that was google (gsuite??) And for 8 years never used anything from the 'five' or their minions - those that fully embraced and exploited the data mining revolution like acquia? (sp). Spent 5 years trying to convince the local community groups to form a collective only other person/site trying to do something similar that I could find was one other drupal user but she's still active, she abandoned hope for money aka became rational, in this age of capital :)

People love facebook/twitter as they can stay in a bubble so why bother creating alternatives.

A couple of years ago I started using youtube again then an android device or 2 but the other day my raspberry pis gave me a shock by pinging microsoft and low and behold vscode has been added to my sources.list. I realised I'm being punished for being lax in my worship at the Stallman altar - I was called a Stallman zealot neckbeard for complaining about the unwanted addition to my sources, no actual valid answer given, just insults, fun times reminded of the old days when replies consisted of RTFM when a noob made a simple query.. Nothing to see here MS heart Linux, damn it's heart breaking just no escape from neoliberalism..

Somehow I ended up here by following links just like the old days of the internet, I'm not really up to date with software anymore so went searching for answers/alternative to what I was doing with the pi's, then looking for a GPL alternative to docker (can't find one). I've became much of a digital hermit rarely even email anymore but as I've shutdown my pi's I need an alternative, if they'll add to my sources.list, what's in their blobs, so might as well use AMD or Intel and monitor traffic like a hawk again + de google again but really want/need mycroft for the misses she's going blind, so pi 4's are ideal with respeaker hubs but shit might as well just use nest ugh

Why hasn't peertube been taken up, only the Alex Jones types seem interested in it *sigh* monied interests trying to devalue it as an option??

When MS acquired github the lack of exodus from the platform was telling and sad. As are the many permissive licenses from people that made their money/got their start from the GPL. Would love to see a chart on the rise of poverty in the west with the decline of the GPL combined with the uptake and rise in MIT/Apache. Software has become a very effective tool of wealth extraction cheered on by the community managers and devs that are supposed GPL warriors that license everything but GPL and use a MAC ..

The tipping point is here, not for us yet but the US is now a failed state with close to 100 million without adequate health care, no money and many without housing with another senile president plus a multitude of poisoned water supplies YAY. But hey always hope the ocean aren't dying the land isn't being denuded, permafrost is so perma and my kids travel more in a year, every year then I have in a lifetime. And thats probably because I bashed energy use it into them so maybe they gave up?? I did, bought a dishwasher and dyer last year thinking about getting a car again but can't really afford one as I thought money would be come less important, damn that hope of mine in an Asimov future instead of the Heinlein world we live in. That said damn it's awesome not worrying about embedded energy or how much I use, tis extremely freeing. This is the most I've written or said in a decade.. I'll stop my sad old man rants now

Cheers Big Ears

>then looking for a GPL alternative to docker (can't find one)

You may be interested in Guix (A GNU project!), more specifically the `guix pack` command / feature for making stuff portable. It can make tarballs or docker containers, and in the case of docker containers, it's making a reproducible docker container, so you've got advantages over using docker directly.

Raspberry Pis have a lot of blobs. They're definitely the most popular option for Single Board Computers, but based on some of what you wrote, I think you might appreciate some of the alternatives like the RockPro64. As for the sources.list thing, maybe Ubuntu/Debian should be avoided if they allowed that to happen. Guix System is a good distro to consider for amd64 machines, and there is also some support for the Pinebook Pro, which uses the same RK3399 SoC as the RockPro64, so maybe that's supported also. Not sure. Another option I've enjoyed lately is postmarketOS. Based on Alpine. Very lean and works pretty well. They support old mobile devices and a few SBCs and such. I run it on my Pinebook Pro and my PinePhone.

This article is a bit old now, so I'm unsure if you'll see this reply. Keep fighting the good fight!

Sad but it's true

The Frightful Five need to be DISASSEMBLED, in the assembly language sense, trade secrets be damned.

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