This has been growing on me very slowly, but very steadily over the decades: we really need to base the digital aspects of our society and our governments on Open Source, Free/Libre software. I don’t want to take away anyone‘s iPhone or PS5 or PC with Windows and Photoshop and Steam, that’s all fine.
But stuff like registering an appointment with my local Citizens Office, or the people at the Citizens Office workers writing a letter to some other government agency, or this other government agency storing said letter on a hard disk somewhere — this whole „digital operating system“ of a country and its people must work without any involvement of closed-source Microsoft, SAP, Apple, Google, AWS stuff being involved.
It was okay to depend on products of Big Corp back when Computers and Networks and Data where a small side quest to everyone‘s life.
But this stuff is now a fundamental building block of society.
Every line of this building block must be publicly available for everyone under a OSS license, period.
I‘m naively hopeful that stuff like the „Deutschlandstack“ is going to be tackled in all seriousness.
I pray that the EU ramps up investment in OSS projects into billions of Euros rather sooner than later.
Freedom of computing/information, i.e. having ability to control computer hardware from software as one wishes. Windows and macOS + driver systems are not anymore allowing this freedom, so on the software-side Linux is our only hope as of 2025.
Quality user experience in things that are core functions of use, and specifically them not getting bogged down (or potentially “bricked” by) the need for luxury, or ads, or ease of use.
In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.
But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didn’t have a seat cooler.
Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I don’t have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.
Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.
You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.
"Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. Pretty much everything I’ve done has had an aesthetic component, at least to me. Now you might think ‘well, building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ But, what’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right […] it’s a beautiful thing to do something right."
We are also surrounded by unspeakable mystery and beauty. At the same time.
In the Civil War movie there’s a moment where the group is cornered by a sniper, pinned to the ground, not knowing if they’ll live beyond a few minutes or not. One of the characters looks at the flowers and the sky and is overtaken by the simple beauty of their existence. This.
Doing good and making the world a better place, finding love, having good relationships with friends and family, solving interesting problems, intellectual growth
A lost cause for the most part, communication. Seems like most of what passes for communication these days is one way; what can I get out of it? how can I use this? do I agree or disagree? do I like this? what does this say about me? etc? etc? etc?. These days, people love to blame this sort of narcissism on the internet but things were not much different in the 80s, it was just easier to believe there was something better, we still had our ignorance.
We are experiencing late stage capitalism which by its nature expands to monetize everything and make every interaction transactional. This requires poisoning our worldview and minds on a global scale.
It is however up to us to let that happen or not. Friendship, community, caring support are possible and exist.
The secret of abundance is not having more but giving from a place of generosity.
Every problem stems from roughly half the population fearing the idea of people and practices that are different from their own. It feels like addressing any other problem is palliative. There has to be a way to improve this.
It's not so much the fear and prejudice that's the problem; it's the idea that violence (or the threat of violence) is an acceptable way to force others to do what we want. You might think that most people don't think violence is acceptable, but every time someone says "there ought to be a law..." they are implicitly accepting the the use of force.
Our prejudices tend to be hard earned, life beats them into us and that makes it difficult to acknowledge that the other side is somewhat correct even if they are wrong in most every way. Extremists have bits of truth in their views; their failing is that they use those bits of truth to validate their extremism, the fault of the rest is in using extremism to invalidate those bits of truth.
But stuff like registering an appointment with my local Citizens Office, or the people at the Citizens Office workers writing a letter to some other government agency, or this other government agency storing said letter on a hard disk somewhere — this whole „digital operating system“ of a country and its people must work without any involvement of closed-source Microsoft, SAP, Apple, Google, AWS stuff being involved.
It was okay to depend on products of Big Corp back when Computers and Networks and Data where a small side quest to everyone‘s life.
But this stuff is now a fundamental building block of society.
Every line of this building block must be publicly available for everyone under a OSS license, period.
I‘m naively hopeful that stuff like the „Deutschlandstack“ is going to be tackled in all seriousness.
I pray that the EU ramps up investment in OSS projects into billions of Euros rather sooner than later.
In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.
But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didn’t have a seat cooler.
Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I don’t have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.
Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.
You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.
I’ve seen people in Ferraris in LA traffic and it looks like agony.
So I guess context often determines an additional threshold of complexity.
"Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. Pretty much everything I’ve done has had an aesthetic component, at least to me. Now you might think ‘well, building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ But, what’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right […] it’s a beautiful thing to do something right."
In the Civil War movie there’s a moment where the group is cornered by a sniper, pinned to the ground, not knowing if they’ll live beyond a few minutes or not. One of the characters looks at the flowers and the sky and is overtaken by the simple beauty of their existence. This.
Consent and respect. Kindness as the default.
Care beyond the transactional.
Art as an expression, healing, experience.
Awareness and reasoning beyond thinking and analysis.
They cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor yet support approx. 25% of all marine species.
They are very beautiful indeed.
They provide coastal protection.
Also, they will be gone in a few decades.
Freedom, including the ability to own and use tools as I wish.
Community.
Also, I try constantly to be a better father and husband. This too is challenging.
It is however up to us to let that happen or not. Friendship, community, caring support are possible and exist.
The secret of abundance is not having more but giving from a place of generosity.
And that will show in your product. It will be kind to your users and customers.
- My kids
- My family
- My house
- Empathy
- Kindness
- Equality
- Usability
- Design / beauty
And AI is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we need for these to thrive...