> Now, most people spend a majority of their time in a locked down environment (phones and tablets) consuming locked down content (subscription only, on approved devices). The default 15 years ago was open, now it is default closed.
I love having the choice. Most of the time I want the locked-down thing. A bunch of extra "freedom" I'm not actually using is just a hassle and liability when all I wanna do is take and crop some photos, or do some writing, or whatever.
Now we have that option, and then also general-purpose computers are so cheap and widely available that you can easily score decent ones for free.
Far from being some computing apocalypse, the situation now is excellent. Computers were a barely-tolerated near-failure for most normal use cases, but now there are options that don't suck for normal people wanting to do normal things. And general-purpose computing is more accessible than ever.
Maybe some Dark Age of Computing still lurks, but it's not happened yet, and things have only gotten better so far.
IMO the worst thing about the current computing era are the handful of Web monopolies and the way "AI"/machine-learning has mostly enabled systems working against us rather than creating agents working entirely on our behalf.
I love having the choice. Most of the time I want the locked-down thing. A bunch of extra "freedom" I'm not actually using is just a hassle and liability when all I wanna do is take and crop some photos, or do some writing, or whatever.
Now we have that option, and then also general-purpose computers are so cheap and widely available that you can easily score decent ones for free.
Far from being some computing apocalypse, the situation now is excellent. Computers were a barely-tolerated near-failure for most normal use cases, but now there are options that don't suck for normal people wanting to do normal things. And general-purpose computing is more accessible than ever.
Maybe some Dark Age of Computing still lurks, but it's not happened yet, and things have only gotten better so far.
IMO the worst thing about the current computing era are the handful of Web monopolies and the way "AI"/machine-learning has mostly enabled systems working against us rather than creating agents working entirely on our behalf.