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Cutting Out the Middleman (by Jen Sorensen)
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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Cutting out the middle man does not involve technologically regressing.
Cutting out the middle man means stepping up and learning how the tech you use in your daily lives actually works. The only reason some tech bro can step in and ruin your life is if you let them keep you ignorant through convenience.
You want to cut out the middle man? Use, and support, open source. Fight to make everything that requires a server, be a server that you own in your own home (or is federated and in your local community). Use, and support, repairable technology... And actually repair your technology!
But then how can you performatively sit in Starbucks with a mechanical typewriter and then post it on social media so everyone knows how progressive and anti-establishment you are???
They are too lazy for that.
The fallacy that technological progress is inherently good is simply flawed. You could say "instead of relying on Spotify, and instead of "technologically regressing", learn open source alternatives and host your own Jellyfin server!"
But what was wrong with "technologically regressing" exactly? A MP3, CD or even tape recording player will: always work, sound great, require zero user friction, never receive updates or security flaws, not depend on a convoluted self hosted setup.
Do you want to listen to music or impress Lemmy? There's absolutely no argument to be made that requires accepting all tech simply because it's tech.
It's also a fallacy that technology always progresses. If technology from 25 years ago serves you better than technology from today, it's the superior technology.
Exactly.
Technological progress isn't inherently anything. It's just technological progress; an inevitability. Fighting against it is like fighting the laws of the universe, if not outright stupidly phobic.
What defines the "goodness" of technology is how people choose to use it.
Everything more said is just pointless philosophical fluff.
Exactly. So arguing that "you shouldn't technologically regress" is meaningless.
Not only is this not applicable to the argument at hand, given there's no law of nature that makes a CD player implode just because Spotify exists, but this statement is so bizarrely wrong it's almost hard to take the rest of the discussion seriously.
Did you lose track of your own argument?
You assumed that I meant technological progress is inherently good. I said technological progress isn't good or bad, just inevitable. That does not mean that technological regression isn't inherently bad.
And yes, the CD player did implode, figuratively, because Spotify exists. :)
False dichotomy and a stupid comic strip making a stupid point all the way down.
If we cared about this issue we would be pushing for the installation of representatives who want to ban planned obsolescence and systems that require you to have the newest, most expensive vehicles, appliances and gadgets. Our current entire government is subservient to and employed by companies that make billions on this manufactured consent to always "needing" to spend our labor on useless junk.
To say nothing of the inherent, massive problem that we made it legal to buy and own politicians.
Yeah no. You just didn't understand the comic and made a stupid point. It happens.
Okay, ya'll kids keep arguing about "devices" while millions of people are forced to buy the newest phones so they can get their email and attend job interviews, while mountains of money get poured into politicians who are affording their fifth homes because Samsung pays them in wheelbarrows of cash to keep consumer protection agencies neutered or destroyed.
Oh look. Lol Amish 2.0
Calling somebody using a retro MP3 player "Amish 2.0" is as moronic as calling you a tech bro neuralink implanted Musk boy just because you're defending technological progress. Both would be equally ridiculous statements, but the difference is, you actually wrote the moronic comment.
These technology phobes are the next generation who will be scammed out of their pension fund, inheritance or investments just like current boomers who refused to advance along with the world, and they deserve to be hacked, scammed, robbed because they refuse to keep learning.
Learn or get left behind.