@tomw the more you know how the sausage is made the less you want to eat it.
I recall when I was an undergrad student a postdoctoral researcher deciding that he'd had enough of it , packed it up, and became a postman in a rural area, and made goats cheese. The last I heard from him was he was still there, happily living off the land and still had no computers in his home.
Personally, I write firmware for a living, but don't want to see a computer at home.

@tomw well, yeah

@tomw

Mastodon ✌😎

@tomw
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves"
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

@tomw@mastodon.social the world would probably be better off without corporations that ruin computers ​:bugcat_nod:​

@tomw
It is also the greatest social media for democracy-loving patriots.

@tomw

Perhaps trapping lightning in rocks and tricking them into thinking wasn't the best idea.

@tomw It was fun at the beginning when you could do just the cool shit. But now there are too many hindrances to do anything. Simple things like hosting a web server for a few friends can't be done without having to use Let's Encrypt. You can't boot from a custom kernel without either signing it (whaaaaat?) or disabling secure boot. I could write an IRC or NNTP bot in an afternoon, good luck doing the same with Discord and Reddit. Everything is an enterprise owned platform. It's so dull...

@tomw

I would say I love them but are wary of their misuse, and wary of over-reliance on unstable over-complex systems. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is. We have to work with what we have available.

@tomw Computers were a mistake.

@tomw Nay, my brother. Our lives will be better for computers. Always. A farmer will resent his plow without disowning it outright. Join the hacker church of Wintermute2b of later day 1337s, and thou will see the light

@tomw To me, its not computers in general that's the problem; its the computers we got.

@tomw ‘familiarity breeds contempt’

@tomw They got us iPhone, Amazon available and all everywhere with corruption. We use bought it all and now we use it to shut it down.

@tomw The Fediverse appears to be a place with a lot of people who see technology and go "whoa, that's neat" instead of "whoa, I wonder how I can harness this to make things shittier and make more money". Or maybe it's just me.

@tomw I think they were ok until right around 2005

@tomw I did my dissertation on AI in 2009. I hate A.I and all the greed it carries from companies.

@tomw let’s knick pick this a little. I just read this one, and I am not using Mastodon. 🤭

@tomw Can't call me out like that haha

@tomw Sounds like I'm in the right place then.

@tomw Back in our formative teenage years, we all saw The Terminator.

@tomw Ha! Amen

@tomw the internet was a mistake.

@tomw

I don't think the world would be better off without computers.

I think the world would be better off without machine learning and Silicon Valley decision makers.

@tomw 🙋🏻‍♂️

@tomw

We can dump #crypto and #ai and I'll be happy enough

Wait, you're right, not good enough

Also, everyone has to leave #tiktok, #facebook, #Instagram, and #twitter and come to the #fediverse and then I'll be happy

Just a small little modest ask

@tomw double standards. /s

@tomw Mmmh... Thinking about this... I love computers, indeed. What if the problem is not computers, but companies having too much power about other people's computers? 🤔

@tomw truth

@tomw it would certainly be a lot better without AI

@tomw I see it differently. Computers are just a tool. It is crucial that they are used fairly and socially.

@tomw I'm always mindful of one of the engineers in The Soul of a New Machine who left a note on his desk saying something like "gone to become a monk".

@tomw Preach.

@tomw
We, the Brotherhood Of The Mentat, agree with that. A Butlerian Jihad is gonna be needed soon 😆😂🤣

@tomw It’s not that I think we’d be better off without computers, I just think we should have stopped somewhere around the Pentium III and put more effort into optimising software :/

@tomw

Evey day you throw a computer in a lake, is a day the world is a better place.

@tomw We love computers. Just not *these* computers.

@tomw 😂🙌

@tomw I would say this differently: In the Internet 1 it was controlled by technicians, universities, nerds and experts. That Internet 1 was a wonderful place.

Then the internet was invaded by lawyers, corporations, governmets and last but not least sociopaths. Now the internet is a shit hole.

@tomw That statement does not include me.

@tomw not...wrong

@tomw

Yes, I love technology, but I also hate technology.

@tomw

If I may, I think we could still have computers...just don't connect them. 😉

@tomw I deeply love computers and also think that I would probably be better off without computers.

@tomw 100% this. I’m one of many.

@tomw But without computers Mastodon would only be on phones.

@tomw I seriously had to set my phone down to process this truth.

@tomw petition to call mastodon users "Mentats"

@tomw I want computers to exist, just not facilitate the extraction of wealth to a handful of exploitive asshats.

@tomw “you let it switch on your washing machine? Are you fucking mental?”

@tomw

When you love someone, you know you have to let them go.

@tomw

...or maybe we should have called it quits once we had KayPro...

@tomw *nootstodon @pingu