The Mobile Phone Is How They Want To Design Computers

[snot]

1. Totally agree; tragic.

I've used both Mac's & PC's, and my favorite OS was Macs' Mountain Lion. You could own and control all your data, store it yourself on relatively cheap hardware, and easily transfer it to other devices -- no need for the inconvenience, expense, and risks associated with having to rely on the Cloud. You had much greater privacy. The system architecture was logical and relatively transparent. You didn't have to worry about your data getting deleted or hacked on the Cloud.

Software in general, at least for the Mac, was also better in many ways. You could own it outright, instead of having to rent it in perpetuity. It also didn't force you to use the Cloud, and it was generally less cluttered and more intuitive.

The internet was also much better – MUCH less slop, and I preferred the way old search engines work. Lately it seems like a real struggle to refine my search enough to find what I'm actually looking for instead of results limited to my geographic region alone or relating to whatever the rest of the world is fixated on at the moment. I also often get fewer results, period – even sites I know are out there may not show up, if they're not already popular.

It's also a constant struggle now to retain even a few shreds of privacy. Seems like I spend as much time trying to opt out of having my data collected and shared as I do actually using the sites that want to collect and share it.

It's also become extremely difficult to avoid doing things on my cell – some sites don't seem set up to let you interface with them in any other way, even though a cell phone is generally the LEAST secure and LEAST empowering digital device that any of us use. I realize that not everyone can afford a desktop or laptop computer, but enough of us can that it seems to me that that should at least be preserved as an option – especially when it comes to authenticating accounts for "security" purposes.

Even social media platforms were better. They were more user-friendly, and efforts to bubble-ize, exploit, and manipulate us financially, politically, and psychologically were just getting started.

Note also that with the trend toward communicating via text or messaging platforms, it's become much more difficult for users to organize messages and the info they contain in empowering ways. E.g., I have elaborate architectures of folders relating to different projects, subjects, people, etc.; I can quickly find almost email I've received or any file I've created or saved without necessarily remembering a key word or phrase that effectively distinguishes it from a mountain of other content. This is extremely helpful, and nothing even close is possible with texts or other apps. Some other messaging apps or platforms at least allow some kind of tagging, but that is a much simpler, cruder, and less effective means for organizing info.

I could go on. Call me cranky, but I really pity younger people who never experienced that brief period around the early 2000's, when for individual users, digital facilities were enormously empowering.

(Of course, I still mourn the passing of community television.)