DarkRange55
🎂
- Oct 15, 2023
- 2,421
I do think all of us need to realize that any technological project even that has the purest motivations like GNU Linux or Bitcoin, they are just as a fact of life going to be taken over by, lets say apathetic interests. There is a cyberpunk core of the OG original Bitcoin guys who had a goal to create a financial system outside of the government. Peer-to-peer cash, peer-to-peer exchange of value. Private, secure all these kinds of things. But you look at Bitcoin as it exists today. We see these projects that have these pure goals and they're taken over by people that like some of the benefits of those goals. Like Linux, people like having a "hackable" system, they like having "free" software. But they don't take it to its logical conclusion. People have Linux but they don't have to have a free BIOS, they don't want to encrypt their hard drives, they think the Free Software Foundation is too stringent and set unrealistic goals. But the fact is unrealistic goals are the things that have made us more free. The people that are out there advocating vociferously, ideologically, who are really transgressing what we think is possible. It's because of people thinking further that we can even be where we are. If there weren't the GNU project, the Free Software Foundation it's not just we wouldn't have 100% free operating systems. We wouldn't have adulterated halfway free software systems. We wouldn't have anything like Linux. Bitcoin is the same way.
As you have more and more people herding into projects because they have benefits at the same time the discernment of the people in those projects just naturally disintegrate. The average ideological standard decreases to reach the lowest common denominator. Linux I think is less bad but you look at Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. The number of people actually seriously caring about creating a fully independent financial system or just anything in that domain are so few. A nearly extinct species. And if that species goes extinct then we have to reinvent the wheel intellectually and ideologically. We've just had so much and now everything has become a fad. Michael Saylor has become the face of Bitcoin. And its all about line go up, its all about having a commodity, its all about making the technology big. Big, big, big. He wants to get everyone into it, governments, the already existing financial system in it. He doesn't want it to be something that actually liberates people. People talk about it but they don't mean it. People don't want something dangerous that is a threat of causing realistic change. They want to redefine Bitcoin. It's no longer a peer-to-peer financial transaction, it's not digital cash anymore. It's just something you hold and watch the number go up. Ultimately thats not what it's supposed to be. It wasn't created to be a way of making money. Thats just an accident of history and digital scarcity. Thats not what it's about. Bitcoin is 16.5 years old according to ChatGPT. We've had this technology for so long and in terms of the difference it makes in individual lives it's been really negligible. It still is a nearly entirely speculative project. Trying to get someone into cryptocurrencies today is almost impossible to do without telling them to sign up for some know your customer exchange where you take a picture of your I.D. and all this kind of stuff. There's a sense in which it's inevitable. What I mean is, when a new technology comes out, it is often, not always, but often spreads like wildfire. And it goes everywhere even to people who are undiscerning, it goes to people who don't understand it, it goes to people who don't get the point especially if that technology makes you money. People getting into Linux today aren't even necessarily motivated by free software or even open source. Sometimes they just like it because it's cool and Windows runs slow. But it spreads everywhere and it's just fundamental that however big it spreads, you have to have that cadre, let's say, of people who actually care. Of people who care what it was originally made for and in fact are looking for ways to push that envelope to make it better than what people ever expected. These people are few.
Technology is spread like wildfire and the issue is what is going to endanger us is not necessarily just some corporations writing software to spy on us. Really it's when people use technology in an undiscerning way because fads take off. Whether it's cryptocurrency, whether it's AI, whatever other fads are going around. People mostly come to them because they are not discerning, they don't really get the point of it. But we just need that core remaining. I've said on here before that I do care about my personal privacy. But what matters way more to me is having systemic privacy. Living in a world where you're not gonna have a corporation or a government that has wide metadata access to everyone that can socially engineer us, that can kind of, I don't know, oppress us, to use a goofy word. But a no less true word, of course. And thats what I'm worried about.
It's nice that we have Linux as an operating system. But I want 100% free and open source hardware. I want open schematics for everything. I don't want to have to worry about the firmware on the motherboard or your processor or any of this kind of intel management. I don't wanna live in a world where we have that. And we might not be able to live right now today in 2025 in a world without that.
I don't know if I had any other points. Just expressing frustration lol
As you have more and more people herding into projects because they have benefits at the same time the discernment of the people in those projects just naturally disintegrate. The average ideological standard decreases to reach the lowest common denominator. Linux I think is less bad but you look at Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. The number of people actually seriously caring about creating a fully independent financial system or just anything in that domain are so few. A nearly extinct species. And if that species goes extinct then we have to reinvent the wheel intellectually and ideologically. We've just had so much and now everything has become a fad. Michael Saylor has become the face of Bitcoin. And its all about line go up, its all about having a commodity, its all about making the technology big. Big, big, big. He wants to get everyone into it, governments, the already existing financial system in it. He doesn't want it to be something that actually liberates people. People talk about it but they don't mean it. People don't want something dangerous that is a threat of causing realistic change. They want to redefine Bitcoin. It's no longer a peer-to-peer financial transaction, it's not digital cash anymore. It's just something you hold and watch the number go up. Ultimately thats not what it's supposed to be. It wasn't created to be a way of making money. Thats just an accident of history and digital scarcity. Thats not what it's about. Bitcoin is 16.5 years old according to ChatGPT. We've had this technology for so long and in terms of the difference it makes in individual lives it's been really negligible. It still is a nearly entirely speculative project. Trying to get someone into cryptocurrencies today is almost impossible to do without telling them to sign up for some know your customer exchange where you take a picture of your I.D. and all this kind of stuff. There's a sense in which it's inevitable. What I mean is, when a new technology comes out, it is often, not always, but often spreads like wildfire. And it goes everywhere even to people who are undiscerning, it goes to people who don't understand it, it goes to people who don't get the point especially if that technology makes you money. People getting into Linux today aren't even necessarily motivated by free software or even open source. Sometimes they just like it because it's cool and Windows runs slow. But it spreads everywhere and it's just fundamental that however big it spreads, you have to have that cadre, let's say, of people who actually care. Of people who care what it was originally made for and in fact are looking for ways to push that envelope to make it better than what people ever expected. These people are few.
Technology is spread like wildfire and the issue is what is going to endanger us is not necessarily just some corporations writing software to spy on us. Really it's when people use technology in an undiscerning way because fads take off. Whether it's cryptocurrency, whether it's AI, whatever other fads are going around. People mostly come to them because they are not discerning, they don't really get the point of it. But we just need that core remaining. I've said on here before that I do care about my personal privacy. But what matters way more to me is having systemic privacy. Living in a world where you're not gonna have a corporation or a government that has wide metadata access to everyone that can socially engineer us, that can kind of, I don't know, oppress us, to use a goofy word. But a no less true word, of course. And thats what I'm worried about.
It's nice that we have Linux as an operating system. But I want 100% free and open source hardware. I want open schematics for everything. I don't want to have to worry about the firmware on the motherboard or your processor or any of this kind of intel management. I don't wanna live in a world where we have that. And we might not be able to live right now today in 2025 in a world without that.
I don't know if I had any other points. Just expressing frustration lol
