We have access to incredible forms of technology, including near instant access to computers across the planet from devices that fit in our pockets. We seem to have organized much of the internet in a way that doesn’t benefit us and often is straight up antithetical to our wants and needs.
How would you change the ways we use software, hardware, sensors, robotics, and all the other amazing tech that’s available today to make the world a better place instead of a place where people scream at each other and get spoon fed ads and information they never asked for?
What does your tech utopia look like?
Here’s the problem, for this to happen, we would first have to reorganize the economy/politics/society. Everything has turned to total shit because we live in a global capitalist plutocracy. Nothing is gonna get much better under that
IMO the big thing is just to broadly remove corporate influence and control. Almost everything that is wrong with the internet has roots in profit/power seeking megalomaniacs thinking up ways to make the technology we use serve their needs exclusively and manipulate everyone’s interactions to cater to that. Tech utopia would be everyone using systems that are designed for organic human interaction, organizing and information exchange, and the people who want to corrupt that being unable to do so.
I’d immediately outlaw the buying or selling of goods and services. The internet should be a free repository of knowledge and a communication platform. Not a marketplace.
You really need to break up Google, Amazon, Meta, and the other gigantic internet companies. There’s a relatively small collections of massive companies that have too much sway over how the internet works and are ubiquitous enough to facilitate mass surveillance and micromanaging what content people are exposed to. The reason the internet doesn’t benefit us and is antithetical to our wants and needs is because it’s setup to bring value to the companies’ shareholders.
All platforms must be decentralized and interoperable and fuck the algorithms.
IMO, peak internet experience was when you had to make an effort to log on. i.e. dialing-up and tying up the phone line. Yeah, the speeds sucked and sometimes you got the dreaded “all circuits are busy now” message during peak hours, but everything else about the experience was better.
When you logged into AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo, etc, you did so with a purpose. You never worried about bothering someone by messaging them at a bad time because if it was a bad time to do so, they wouldn’t be online in the first place.
“Back in my day” (lol), the internet wasn’t always on, it wasn’t demanding your attention, it wasn’t pestering you with constant notifications, it wasn’t in your face all the time, it wasn’t constantly recommending or suggesting things at you (not “to” you, at you) etc, etc. It was there when you needed it but didn’t butt into your life every second when you weren’t.
You could disconnect.
I honestly don’t know what we can really do about it. Personally, I turn off pretty much anything that can send a notification except SMS/MMS and check manually when I want to. Some people hate that and get annoyed that I rarely respond instantly to IMs and such, but I hate being constantly “on” as well as the expectation to be.
I’m going to hop onto this comment to add the biggest problem is the internet is too fast. Go back 20 years and people were stressing about every 10kb of script size. Think about everything that’s ruined by speed:
- ads fucking everywhere
- tracking scripts fucking everywhere
- websites that support millions of users instead of fragmenting people and topics by niche
- doom scrolling and infinite scrolling in general — people used to wait 10s for a page to load and then all the ui was client side
- games are released as garbage requiring day-1 patches
- engagement algorithms pushing people to unending video content to make them scared or outraged
- always connected games for no fucking reason at all
- probably dozens of more things
Peak Internet was at DSL speeds. Fast enough to transfer text quickly but not effectively unlimited. Now we have 1Gbps and it’s fucking unhealthy.
Editing to add new bad shit as I think of it.
Being out of reach is a joy I don’t think the current generation understands.
Thinking about it now, some of my favorite hobbies, playing bass, snowboarding, skateboarding, riding motorcycles, all require that I be out of reach.
Agreed.
Not sure about current generation, but the Gen Z people in my life do seem to understand the concept but are absolutely terrified of it. Like, if they don’t have cell service when we go camping, they are just super agitated like they’ve lost their sense of smell or something. Could just be those specific people, but that’s the only sample I have to gauge on.
Like, if they don’t have cell service when we go camping, they are just super agitated like they’ve lost their sense of smell or something.
LMAO
Me mfw when I’m a millennial laughing and also sympathizing at the GenZers’ inability to exist in the world without electronic devices and high speed bips and boops
As a parent of Gen Z, I can offer no evidence to dispute this.
And here I am pining for that disconnection haha.
My web would be a lot more focused on static content, aka text content and a less centralized one too. Making for a much leaner web (less resources wasted to load useless crap) while at the same time making for a much slower web to… consume as reading takes time, which also means the necessity to carefully pick what one will read instead of doom scrolling and also spend more time/attention reading each pick, one can’t just glance at a block of text).
Hopefully, a Web less self-centered, with less fomo/anxiety/hate/anger/stupidity/numbness. With more attention and awareness to the other(s).
First off require all social media to have a reverse-chronological feed of who the users choose to follow front and center.
It’s better to start over from scratch than it is to try to reorganize a huge code base.
Therefore, Internet 2.0, where it’s only IRC channels for support, forums as “social media”, and simple file sharing sites for your video and image content. You don’t need anything else.
Apply the Linux mentality to the Internet 2.0 and it won’t be so bloated with slop.
EDIT: Oh, and no JavaScript! That can stay quarantined with the Internet 1.0
Public infrastructure, community hubs, better regulation of what algorithms can and can’t do, trusted networks, mesh networks, public knowledge bases, chronological timelines, innovation pushed over profit. It’s a tall order.
Less popups. I don’t mind the banner style ads both horizontal and vertical but the pop-ups are annoying.
