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Yeah, totally! What I was getting at is that if this digital world feels foreign or "wrong" to you (or the author of that blog post), you might lock yourself out from all of this.
I'm an optimist. I see all of these amazing things happening. People finding each other, coming together, creating something cool and fun. Sometimes, even useful. I'm glad that many more people today find value in the Web compared to ten or twenty years ago.
So apparently there are many optimists out there, but perhaps we don't hear too much from them because they're busy modding, learning, sharing instead of ranting at how bad everything is.
I too am a professional software guy and nerd-from-birth much like yourself, and I basically agree with the emotional thrust of the Kriss piece. I'm not sure why you think his attitude comes from ignorance of how things work; you simply assert this as being self evident. I've been helping to build the shit machine for the past 20 years and I can see quite clearly what I've done.
It's a stab at understanding techno-pessimism. I can't be sure where the author's attitude comes from truly. But the fear/lack-of-agency is my main hypothesis.
Why is it shit?
Yes, it's kludge on top of kludge. Duct tape and bubble gum. Layers and layers of it, going back decades at this point. Yet, it works. Between everything from router buffer bloat to stupid bugs in JS libraries, thanks to layer and layers of fallbacks, including the fallback of last resort when the user has to refresh the page or reload the app--it works.
Or is your take more about what the machine is being used for? Porn. Funny cats. Surveillance. Social media addiction. True, that's all there, but there are also people doing incredible things. Plus, one does not rule out the other, since a person might spend 6 hours a day browsing stupid stuff on Reddit, then go ahead and make helpful videos on youtube.
That's my view more or less. Why do you think it's a shit machine?
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I'm with you. I've been locked into the technophagus practically since birth, and everything in that piece has resonated strongly with my own waning interest in the Internet. The past year-or-two for me has been demarcated by an increasing desire to withdraw from online interactions and disillusion with big platforms inevitably turning to shit. Hell, even Google Search these days feels like a cheap advertising gimmick - nowadays, if I have a question I need answered, I use the Reddit site search instead of google.. because that way I find responses written by humans instead of soulless, mindless auto-generated "blog posts".
In a way, it is my understanding of technology that precisely is what makes it so awful for me. Because I know what technology is capable of. And instead, I see it used for.... this. Another skinner box designed to make humans miserable. I'm sick of it and want it to die, for the real life to be revived.
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