I.T. and its unethical future
It’s almost midnight and the cold weekends of the Mountainous area I have the privilege to call home. Times like these often give me some space to indulge or reflect on things which in normal routine I would avoid, or be ignorant about. This time, my concern led me to think about how public and fragile our personal life will be in near future.
I would like to apologize in the start about the sweeping statement I just wrote in the introductory paragraph; however, a recurring thought has kept bugging me ever since the Covid’s second wave in late 2020s — that is, does my college degree in Engineering or my job as a senior software engineer made anyone’s life better. It certainly made mine bearable, pays the bill and I can afford a thing or two every next month. I have been lucky in that regard…. But the question still lingers on me, not because I want to write a code that will end the world hunger as soon as it is compiled or bring justice to the world. But I wonder about the little differences, did it help a community search for an answer they were looking for? I will be lying if I said I started my medium blog to help out the developers community. I did it, because I needed it to socialize the products I was assigned to bring into the search engine’s circulation — but it was short-lived and I started using it as a diary for the things I could fetch whenever in need. and in doing so, I became a part of a community who search for answers.
My last post was a programming problem that made me sleepless for two weeks. The software guys who worked in agile software development teams know, two weeks is a single sprint and clients need to be answered or delivered with the promises that have been made. Alas, this is a topic for another day. But the point is; I wrote it so I don’t have to remember it and can pull it up for future references. But once I wrote it, I realized that it can become a tutorial of sorts for the people in my close circles. Hence, it proved to be a catalyst for my leniency towards free knowledge and net neutrality. I still haven’t done enough — or done anything per se. But each day has been a constant reminder of how only
is a mainstream organization which addresses the risks for the freedom of future.I wouldn’t be writing this today, but I guess I have all the time in world to rant about something today. Facebook’s idea of going
and the recent surge in NFTs are a warning sign of how off the track we have gone with the IT industry and the biggest irony that slapped open source community’s face was the selling of the original World Wide Web’s source code as a NFT.The founding of both; internet and Crypto-currency was to fight against the greed that we human possess. The greed to own something unique, a land, a watch, or pixelated image of a whale that has no value except vanity.
If I was to write this in 2040, I believe I wouldn’t be able to attach a cover photo for this article as I did now. But is this what future be like? We don’t have much of freedom of roaming around and exploring mother earth without taking 100 permissions and taxes right now. Internet is a place where we can at least belong to a place where we feel free. If a website doesn’t allow us to read its article for free, we still can find 100s of others that provide knowledge on the same topic for less or for free.
It wasn’t too long when we realized how the things we thought are free were actually making a very few very very rich, to top it off — we started limiting the free-est form of conversation and made it exclusive for the rich.
I realize the 10 or 20 people who will read this and the 2 or 3 who will scroll down to this line will more likely to disagree on my take on this most ambiguous article, let me assure you. I know NFTs and cryptocurrencies still need to evolve and require a lot of innovation before we can label them good or evil.
But the fight of the future is the war with the Rich. It’s not A.I. it’s not Covid. But it’s the people like Jeff Bezos. The people who represent the American Dream, but don’t return the fair share to Uncle Sam.
These people will purchase an Ape’s illustration — but won’t free the animals from the zoo. These people will talk fancy on
about mental health, but won’t allow their employees a break without making them feel guilty about not working to their full potential. Will to space for 10 mins paying $28 millions, but won’t cut off their carbon footprint which can actually save the mother earth.Just to put it in perspective. Here is what our favorite Inspiring quote machines have paid against their earning between 2014 and 2018.
It’s leaders like these who worry me; just 6 months prior we were worried about ourselves being the product of free social media. But if the future was to lent to these tech leaders, we will have to pay to keep ourselves a product in their respective databases.
We gave them the data; we gave them access to our private lives. Now we will literally roam their world with the image they made for us using all the data they had on us — whether ethically or unethically.
There is a war to come, and it will be not against Machines but our own virtual selves.
We are the future, and we are moving rapidly towards our slavery. Support free knowledge, patreon the independent content creators who bring you free entertainment, pay a cup of coffee to the developer who kept his repository public for you to use.
We can only win through the tools created by community for the community. Learn from mistakes, take a deep dive into technology. Learn everything you can, and this is how we can survive and nurture.
May the Force be with you.
