You don’t. Every aspect of modern society needs some amount of tech. But the tech we need doesn’t automatically need to be the adware-laden, spyware-as-a-service enshittified garbage that BigTech foists on us in the name of ever-increasing quarterly profits.
We all have a choice. If you can make tech, you can choose to make tech for humans, not corporations. There are numerous apps that we would all love a simple, cleanly implemented version maintained by a small team of individuals dedicated to creating a useful application that solves real-world problems without ripping anybody off or filling our viewscreens with pointless ads.
There’s a simple equation anybody can follow. Make something useful that someone else finds value in, sell it for a reasonable price. That’s it. That’s all any of us need to do in tech. Grab the off-the-shelf hardware, the open-source software, make something useful, and sell it for a modest profit that the makers can live a modest life on.
We all can choose to be less greedy any time we want. We can choose to work for less greedy people. We can choose to maximize for human impact, or for quality, or for longevity. We do not need to keep choosing maximum profit at the expense of our own ecological well-being.
I will add soon as I possibly can. I’ve got several ideas banging around and as soon as the opportunity presents itself, I will. I’m (educated) guessing within the next 5 years.
Exactly, I doubt the person or persons who developed ICEBlock are getting tons of income from the project compared how much it costs to host and run the project, but the project is immediately creating a positive impact in society.
What do you do if you want to leave tech?
You don’t. Every aspect of modern society needs some amount of tech. But the tech we need doesn’t automatically need to be the adware-laden, spyware-as-a-service enshittified garbage that BigTech foists on us in the name of ever-increasing quarterly profits.
We all have a choice. If you can make tech, you can choose to make tech for humans, not corporations. There are numerous apps that we would all love a simple, cleanly implemented version maintained by a small team of individuals dedicated to creating a useful application that solves real-world problems without ripping anybody off or filling our viewscreens with pointless ads.
There’s a simple equation anybody can follow. Make something useful that someone else finds value in, sell it for a reasonable price. That’s it. That’s all any of us need to do in tech. Grab the off-the-shelf hardware, the open-source software, make something useful, and sell it for a modest profit that the makers can live a modest life on.
We all can choose to be less greedy any time we want. We can choose to work for less greedy people. We can choose to maximize for human impact, or for quality, or for longevity. We do not need to keep choosing maximum profit at the expense of our own ecological well-being.
They’re talking about leaving big tech. FAANG types.
"I will try to make as few assumptions as possible:
So you can still be a technologist, just not in a tech company.
I will add soon as I possibly can. I’ve got several ideas banging around and as soon as the opportunity presents itself, I will. I’m (educated) guessing within the next 5 years.
Exactly, I doubt the person or persons who developed ICEBlock are getting tons of income from the project compared how much it costs to host and run the project, but the project is immediately creating a positive impact in society.