Same thing, different name

[PMc]

PMc, I wouldn't say there hasn't been much innovation in the last 50 years.

There have been genuine innovations like blue and organic LEDs (allowing them to be used as imaging tech), solid state storage, transistor fabrication technology, material science for heat management, proliferation of wireless technologies, elliptical cryptography, etc.

[/QUOTE]

I doubt if that is really comparable innovation. Between 1925 and 1975 basically everybody got a car, a telephone and a TV, and we landed on the moon.
All this brought interesting new possibilities into life, and (most) people did follow along and did participate and enjoy the new options.

I'd say the innovation has been in evolving systems in a compatible way. They weren't earth shattering the same way transistors or VLSI were. They came in and quietly supplanted what came before.

I'm inclined to believe that this is all a deliberate choice. In the heyday of innovation of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, there was a lot of disruptive changes. This turbulence lead to a lot of incompatibility, considerable frustration, and quite a few innovations being rejected.

Well, I didn't see that.
But then, during the last two decades here in Germany almost all the railway offices were removed and replaced by machines. Now when you watch somebody used to tell the clerk that they need a ticket from A to B with these features, and now stands before that machine all helpless trying to figure how the machine wants to force them to behave...

Because that is the point of it all: no longer do we get machines enabling us to reach new dimensions of our live, instead now we get machines forcing us to behave to their desires and in their image!

Also, indeed, nowadays everybody has a "smartphone". In 1970, only Cpt. Kirk had such a thing. But then, I did analyze such a piece and found it has only two function

• you can enable all kinds of companies to continuousely barf their advertisement crap onto you, and
• you can enable all kinds of companies to continuousely sniff out all of your behaviour.

Otherwise, it is just a castrate computer.

It was far from clear how to integrate many ideas. There's little reason to believe bringing that kind of environment back would be actually beneficial to producers or consumers considering most consumers aren't maxing out their current systems as is.

The problem basically starts with the contempt for human beings, i.e. considering people as "consumers".
But that is indeed where it is going in turbo-capitalism: these people are only needed to consume, they're not relevant as human beings. Nobody needs human beings anymore.

 

[Hobbes]

considering people as "consumers".

Many —and I mean many— years ago my father, a man deeply committed to civic associations, told me—in light of the rise of consumer groups—that he feared the day when we would all see ourselves as consumers rather than citizens.

That day arrived long time ago...

 

[Crivens]

George Orwell was on to something. Who would have known?

 

[serjsk8]

A very interesting book about consumer society "The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures" Written in 1970 by Jean Baudrillard, but when you read it, it seems like it was written just yesterday.
I recommend reading it, it's very interesting!

 

[Crivens]

Every time someone changes the meaning of a word or phrase my ears prick up. I got the first tipoff when the first oil crisis hit (you know, riding your bike on the highway, no cars except flashing blue were allowed). Suddenly the oil exporting countries were refered to as oil producing, which removed the connotation of limits. So being called a consumer instead of a citizen also removes agency from the label you are expected to use for yourself. Now we are supposed to be internet service consumers and users instead of participants or creators. Qui Bono?

 

[PMc]

Now we are supposed to be internet service consumers and users instead of participants or creators.

That is exactly my point!
A main feature with the Internet is that every node (say: ip-address) technically has the same abilities.

Then there is that stance from marxist theory, that the labourer can not only not influence their working conditions, they also cannot freely communicate, because in order to communicate (at scale), they would need a newspaper or a radio station, which again would require capital.
Sociologically perceived, the Internet should, by it's very nature, invalidate or remedy this stance.

But then things have been changed, and those corps which are now the richest on the planet have appeared on the internet, providing services with zero innovation and zero level of creativity. And somehow everybody happened to believe they would need these services in favour of those already included in the Berkeley OS which basically could do the same.