318 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
318 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Back button double caret [2][coffee-cup] [graphic-22]
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12 March 2024
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essay
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Any Technology Indistinguishable From Magic is Hiding Something
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Somewhere between the [3]death of our favorite aggregator websites and the
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world surviving a pandemic, the modern internet was reduced to four companies
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in a trench coat. On the breast pocket of that trenchcoat is a name tag that
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reads “The Cloud.” Under that name tag is an older name tag that reads “The
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Internet.” And under that name tag is a frayed embroidery that reads, “ARPANET
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(non-commercial use only, motherfuckers),” in a lovely script typeface and
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craftsmanship you just don’t see nowadays.
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Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta (GAMM) now own most of the steel and glass
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that makes the internet go vroom. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft control
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seventy-five percent of the cloud computing market^[4][1]. Meta and Google own
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half of the fiber optic cables supplying internet services across continents^
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[5][2]. Most of our favorite productivity apps, retail websites, and social
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media platforms are beholden to proprietary infrastructure controlled by these
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four corporations. They own the most heavily trafficked server networks, all
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the GPUs, and gigawatts, and whatever.
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They call it the cloud, but really, that’s just the internet.
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So, what we know as the cloud doesn’t actually exist. It’s a euphemism that
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obfuscates the consolidation of critical infrastructure. The cloud is
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metaphysical porn for wild-eyed technocrats in Allbirds who say things like,
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“I’m making a dent in the universe” without a whisper of irony. It’s bullshit.
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It’s fugazi. There is no spoon, Neo.
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The cloud is a lie.
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So, now that GAMM owns all this infrastructure, but no one really knows they
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own it all, or even that there's an "all” to own, they're doing what American
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corporations do best— selling us the biggest truck we're willing to drive off
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the lot. But instead of F-250s, it's raw computing power manifested into
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virtual reality conference rooms.
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The future of the web is consumption [6]#
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Web 3.0 probably won’t involve the blockchain or NFTs in any meaningful way. We
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all may or may not one day join the metaverse and wear clunky goggles on our
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faces for the rest of our lives. And it feels increasingly unlikely that our
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graphic designers, artists, and illustrators will suddenly change their job
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titles to "prompt artist” anytime soon.
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But none of that really matters. We keep waiting for the next iteration of the
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web, or the internet, but the future is now, baby. We’re living it at this very
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moment. It snuck through the backdoor when no one was looking.
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Over a decade or more, while our politicians were busy sub-tweeting fascists
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for clout, GAMM was buying up all the infrastructure it could carry. The old
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sync-and-share business model wasn’t working for them anymore, so they turned
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the internet into a network of expensive, gas-guzzling computing power.
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It makes sense. The production cost of data storage plummeted by 94% in just
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ten years^[7][3]. You can't sell 50GB plans to college kids who own M2 Macbook
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Pros with a terabyte of solid-state storage. That's not how you build
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hundred-year empires.
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So what did GAMM do? They convinced us that our notetaking apps require an
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internet connection and forty thousand dollar GPUs located on a server three
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hundred miles away. That's the future they've made for us.
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It’s consumption. Its monopolistic control. It’s computing-hungry magic tricks
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thrown at the wall, hoping something sticks. The next iteration of the web by
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way of the internet is just one long infomercial of fifty-dollar solutions to
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fifty-cent problems.
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I can’t stress this point enough. The reason why GAMM and all its little
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digirati minions on social media are pushing things like crypto, then the
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blockchain, and now virtual reality and artificial intelligence is because
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those technologies require a metric fuckton of computing power to operate. That
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fact may be devastating for the earth, indeed it is for our mental health, but
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it’s wonderful news for the four storefronts selling all the juice.
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Open(ness) for business [8]#
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The presumptive beneficiaries of this new land of milk and honey are so drunk
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with speculative power that they'll promise us anything to win our hearts and
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minds. That anything includes magical virtual reality universes and robots with
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human-like intelligence. It's the same faux-passionate anything that proclaimed
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crypto as the savior of the marginalized. The utter bullshit anything that
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would have us believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, and the powerful
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won't do anything to stop it.
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Right now, there's a four-way chess match in which each competitor will take a
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position of openness or security depending on which ideology helps them gain
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more market share.
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Amazon controls 35% of the cloud computing market and has created a tight seal
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around its customer base. So, Meta and Google started preaching the importance
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of data portability. The [9]Data Transfer Initiative is a red herring protocol
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that does little more than allow Meta and Google to compare notes on the data
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they have on us. But the message is, of course, "user empowerment.” [10]El oh
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fucking el.
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If either Google or Meta's market positions change, you better believe they
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will pivot to security fearmongering while lifting that drawbridge.
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Amazon is mostly quiet as the frontrunner in the cloud computing market.
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Microsoft, however, may've earned itself a hundred-year reign with OpenAI. So,
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its job is just to scare us into believing that AI has the power to bring about
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the apocalypse and that Microsoft is the only company that can control it.
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There's no way OpenAI survives any of this, by the way—not as an independent
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company anyway. Without Microsoft running ChatGPT on its servers, OpenAI has no
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product.
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Google and Meta want the tech world to believe that building a sufficient moat
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for its respective AI businesses is impossible. Google went so far as to leak a
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[11]frantic internal memo. In it, an employee claims that open-source AI is
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"eating its lunch” and that they might as well release their code to the
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public.
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This framing is a half-truth, and it's purposefully deceptive. Yes, if everyone
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open-sources its AI models, they cannot build a moat on proprietary software.
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However, Google's memo fails to mention that it already has the infrastructure
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to run computing-hungry AI models and that infrastructure is wildly expensive
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to build. That's why four companies own most of it. The real moat is the fields
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of data centers, specialized GPUs, and hundreds of miles of deep-sea fiber
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optic cables.
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And then there's Zuck [12]#
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No one has a more grandiose vision for the internet than Mark Zuckerberg. The
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dude read a 1980s dystopian sci-fi novel where the world was so shitty, people
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spent all of their time in a virtual reality universe, and he thought— yeah,
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humans will love this beep boop beep (or whatever sound he makes when he has an
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idea). And you know what? There’s a sporting chance that the son of a bitch
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pulls it off.
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Whatever. The metaverse is not the story here. And whether or not Zuck actually
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believes the bullshit he preaches about his virtual reality hellscape isn’t
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relevant.
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What matters is that Meta is likely the most sophisticated cloud computing
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company on the planet. Facebook cut its teeth on a barebones web before the
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cloud market even existed. Zuck has open-sourced more cloud architecture than
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most companies could ever hope to develop in a lifetime. Amazon Web Services
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doesn’t gain a third of the cloud computing market without Facebook’s
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contributions.
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So, I think it’s a mistake to write off Zuck as some tech-bro idiot chasing his
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tail. He’s not Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg is a capable businessman who
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understands the industry better than most tech founders.
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I don’t know the guy personally, but look at the facts. Half of the world is on
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his suite of apps. He’s been the king of social media for twenty years. You can
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count on one hand the number of competing social media platforms that have
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survived his reign. His anti-competitive strategies are so effective that
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universities [13]have studied it.
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Psychopath? Probably. Should you hate him? Sure. But don’t underestimate him.
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He’s shrewd and cunning and will rip your fucking head off if you hit the App
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Store’s top 100.
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With that in mind, let’s examine some of Zuck’s recent moves with fresh eyes.
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Mark Zuckerberg didn’t spend ten billion dollars on GPUs to achieve augmented
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general intelligence, a pursuit no one can even confirm is possible, just so he
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can then give away the technology for free. That doesn’t make sense. He is a
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chief executive with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
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He’s made these moves because raw computing power is the business model. So,
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who gives a shit if Meta put Llama on Github for free? How will anyone ship
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their resulting AI-featured app without Meta’s cloud infrastructure? Read the
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terms and conditions. [14]Llama is not open-source.
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Zuck isn’t the mad scientist his PR team wants us to think he is. He’s selling
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us printers at cost so that later he can fuck us on the price of ink.
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One layer up, one step ahead. [15]#
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This post has been a stone-cold bummer, huh? I know, I know. I put you through
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some shit just now. I’m sorry about that.
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Listen, I know we want to believe that things are changing for the better. For
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the first time in a long while, there’s hope for the future of the web. There’s
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something in the air, something that feels like meaningful change. Things are
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happening. It’s lovely, actually.
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When corporate social media platforms began to crumble a few years ago, we
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looked for alternatives. Some of us, like myself, rediscovered the open web. We
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reminisced about a time when the web was more than just search engine
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optimization and key performance indicators. Before an algorithm made us dance
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for our dinners. And it just felt right. So, we made blogs and personal
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websites and put little pixelated badges on the footers like we used to. We
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then moved to decentralized social media and joined [16]small forums.
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We carved out a space on the web that wasn’t for sale.
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But don’t you see, you beautiful idiot? (Pretend like I’m shaking you by the
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shoulders frantically.) Our existence on this unincorporated web threatens
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those who have made their fortunes off our digital lives. The four largest
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corporations in the world won’t just roll over and let us have the quirky indie
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web we all want. They’ve moved one layer up so that they remain our gatekeepers
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no matter where we go.
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There are no easy answers. Entire books exist on how to take back the internet
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they’ve stolen from us. [17]Internet For The People by Ben Tarnoff is one of my
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favorites. It’s an inspiring exploration of the untold history of the internet,
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and it has some great calls to action.
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Today, we can start by giving each other some grace. Let’s move away from the
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trappings of the morality Olympics we’re playing with the social media
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platforms we participate in. The factions created by that behavior don’t
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benefit us. It benefits them. They love to see it. Some people are on Twitter,
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some are on Threads. What the fuck ever. It doesn’t matter. Under the hood,
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Twitter is just the company that removed “Don’t Be Evil” from its mission
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statement. Threads is run by the company responsible for [18]cultivating a
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genocide. None of our hands are clean.
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And if you’re on Mastodon or some other decentralized social media, that’s
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great! Don’t be a dick about it. For some people, TikTok is their livelihood.
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For others, Instagram is the difference between speaking to someone that day or
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not. We’re all just doing the best we can. But we’re fighting each other when
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we could be working together to take these motherfuckers down a peg.
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The internet doesn’t run on scattered clouds and rushing streams. It takes
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heaps of fibered glass and twisted steel to send a DM to that cute French boy
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from your year abroad. And it takes thousands of miles of laid cable, traveling
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at impossible speeds through the depths of our oceans, for him to leave you on
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read. I’m not judging. We’ve all been there, mon cheri.
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But someone must own all that infrastructure. And with ownership comes control.
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This fact is worth stating out loud. It’s worth communicating in our preferred
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typeface. Even if some of us are more aware of it than others. Otherwise, we
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get lost in the magic of it all. We become more beholden to our Internet
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overlords.
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Who’s to say how a cloud computing oligopoly will affect our everyday lives?
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But it feels big—bigger than even the telecommunications and cable TV
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monopolies of the 1990s or Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post. The
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internet is how we’ve been able to disperse information and organize with each
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other. Good people on the web have stepped up when our news organizations and
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politicians failed us.
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Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta already control so much of what we see and
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don’t see. If they can suppress an active genocide on the platform layer,
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imagine what they can do when they control the whole kit and kaboodle.
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So, if we want a true indie web, we must be prepared to fight for it. Hope is
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not enough.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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1. [19]Cloud Market Gets its Mojo Back; AI Helps Push Q4 Increase in Cloud
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Spending to New Highs [20]↩︎
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2. [21]Internet For The People [22]↩︎
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3. [23]Historical cost of computer memory and storage [24]↩︎
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Metadata
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label name
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Plot [26]notebook
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Published 12 March 2024
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Type essay
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Phase sorting
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Tags [27]technocrats, [28]the web
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Assumed audience everyone
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caffeinate me
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If you have ever found my writing valuable and you want to help me continue
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avoiding doing my laundry, you can [29]buy me a coffee. It would mean a lot.
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† Article's assumed audience (AAA)
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Sometimes, I identify who I'm writing for as a way to provide contextIt's like
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saying, "I'm using a lot of technical terms because I wrote this post for
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frontend developers,” or "Sorry if I'm getting too symmetrical, this one's for
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my Wes Anderson fans." But, all are welcomed, always. If you're not in this
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article's intended audience, but you find this article interesting, wonderful!
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Please stick around, read the post, and feel free to ask me questions.
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Referrals & affiliates
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I do not receive commission for anything I share, endorse, or discuss, anywhere
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on From Jason. I have no sponsorships, or advertiser agreements. If that ever
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changes, I will let you know.
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Ornamentation with the word Finis in a banner.
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2086© (so I don't forget to change the year) From Jason [30]2.3.0
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This site is dedicated to the old web, the weird web, the web that screamed in
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horror when summoned through a land line.
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[31]Don't click here
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References:
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[1] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/
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[2] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromjason
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[3] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/
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[4] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn1
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[5] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn2
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[6] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#the-future-of-the-web-is-consumption
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[7] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn3
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[8] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#open-ness-for-business
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[9] https://dtinit.org/
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[10] https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2024/01/13/threads-now-lets.html
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[11] https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2024/01/17/a-quick-rant.html
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[12] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#and-then-there-s-zuck
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[13] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202019.pdf
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[14] https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-llm-not-open
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[15] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#one-layer-up-one-step-ahead
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[16] https://32bit.cafe/
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[17] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667898/internet-for-the-people-by-ben-tarnoff/
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[18] https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
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[19] https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/cloud-market-gets-its-mojo-back-q4-increase-in-cloud-spending-reaches-new-highs
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[20] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref1
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[21] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2674-internet-for-the-people
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[22] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref2
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[23] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage?tab=table&time=2002..latest
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[24] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref3
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[26] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook
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[27] https://www.fromjason.xyz/tags/technocrats/
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[28] https://www.fromjason.xyz/tags/the-web/
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[29] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromjason
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[30] https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/from-jason-2-0-is-an-11ty-powered-digital-garden-with-multiple-plots/
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[31] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#
|