Its interesting that we have created a world where the people who build software are often the most skeptical of and aviodant of the software industry.
I was thinking the same too. Even for myself, I just own a laptop and a smart phone. If I could get rid of the phone I would.
No smart watches, home automation devices, wearable fitness devices, none. I've used some of them at one point or another and in hindsight, while they did bring some benefit (mostly convenience), I found their privacy, financial, environmental costs to be just too high to justify the marginal benefits.
Give me a minimal Linux machine and the vibrant Linux community where we fix each others' issues and I'm a happy engineer and a human being :)
Phones have become our ever present little snitch that tells the overlords every physical place you go, every place you surf, everyone you call, and the ambient conversations it picks up from people speaking near it. How we got here is called convenience, and the overlords know how to work that angle endlessly.
I feel like a luddite sometimes. I want to limit as much as possible how many devices I own that have access to the internet. My computer(s), HTPC, phone, game consoles, and that's it. There's no reason anything else ever needs internet access.
Luddites were right in their own way: their point was not against technology in abstract, but about the destruction it brought to their line of work with no alternative offered.
But, Luddites aside, being enthusiastic for any application of technology is a sign of the idiot consumer or the naive futurist.
The actual technologist knows that some tools are good for X and not for Y use cases, and also knows when to cut down technology (as opposed to add for the sake of it).
(Same way we don't add features to our programs for the sake of it, and many features are put there by demand of the marketing team to get more money out of users, not to give them something better).
The way I would frame it is that the Luddites weren't against the technology and automation, they were against the how the gains from that increased productivity were share - with 100 % going to the owners and none going to the workers.
The reason why people think of them as of "dumb people breaking the machines" is because history is written by the victors.
i have a darker assumption: people like using software to exploit problem X, but they dont like the idea that they are problem Y needing to be exploited.
You’re far from alone. I recently outright blocked all DNS traffic, including known DoH providers, on my network firewall for all my devices except my Pi-Hole.
Then, I blocklisted all Google and Facebook domains on my Pi-Hole… except for YouTube’s content servers so I can use Invidious.
In fact, I might follow your example and add an outbound allowlist to my firewall. Seems like the next logical step.
I keep waiting for someone to write a book about how often this is the case in different industries, areas of expertise, etc. It's a variation on the George Bernard Shaw thing: "every profession is a conspiracy against the laity".
In my own profession I'm extremely wary of my peers and the services they provide for the simple fact that I know how much and how often things can go wrong, and when I've needed those services myself, it takes me a very long time to vet people.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith
Because we know how something can be abused until there is another way to abuse it. It's an endless way to abuse it, where a PM with an even more cynical goal will introduce an even more disgusting way to monetize a product. Finally, it's to save money on production costs and make even more money. All this thanks to software scalability, pluggability, etc etc. All you need is finally the idea, and if you have a crazy idea backed up by a graph that shows you can make 20% of profit more, that's it, done.
Eventually people get used to it. That's the main selling point, always. We are commoditizing literally everything, it's happening under our nose and we just let it happen. Until finally alternatives come and we need to pay double to have something we used to have 20 years ago (conceptually speaking, not technically) for a normal/cheaper price.
Can we boycot this? Yes, by buying products whose pricing model is old and outdated. And that's typically not the shiny one...
There will also always be a horde of developers who mistake normal users' lack of understanding for what's going on and an inability to see the direction this is taking us in with consent or even enthusiastic assent.
Paraphrasing upton sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his stock options vesting depends on his not understanding it.
See also: privacy, right to repair, app stores with 30% markups on in-app transactions, intrusive advertising, the death of journalism, internet connected lightbulbs, bitcoin CO2 emissions, electronic voting, etc.
I don't think that is the issue. if you ever start a startup the first thing an investor will ask is what problem you are solving. Connected cars, fridges etc aren't solving any problem I have. I don't even use the inbuilt maps etc on my car. The phone is a much better device for that in every way.
Most large industries are short-term profit-driven, to the detriment or exclusion of all else. The goal thus isn't to provide the best service or product, but to discover the best way to exploit the "customer" (the real customers are whoever owns the company.) Thus, this is probably true in many fields, not just software. People work hard to acquire skill in a field they care about and believe in, and are rewarded by a whole career of using that skill to make sub-standard or even dangerous products because that's what makes their employers the most money.
Ikea is actually not bad. Their materials are cheap but the designs are decent for the price. Compared to comparable items from target or Walmart you typically get a better product. Obviously you aren’t going to get a finely created product out of high end material but in the bottom tier price range they are the best. You would have to pay 2-3x as much to get a minor step up in quality.
