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0 pointsmerrywhether4y ago0 comments

I like the idealism of your arguments, but tech idealism doesn’t matter without users. And the majority of users have repeatedly chosen proprietary UX innovations over things like standards and interoperability. And many of these things are just an underlying standard with some changes/additions sprinkled on top, but those changes are differentiating to the product. Slack, Zoom, Gmail, etc. Some of their success is network-driven, but their unique work play no small part. And other companies tried different ideas and failed, and we’re lucky that Atlassian didn’t somehow get bad Hipchat-specific additions onto the IRC spec to albatross us all forever. On the web people chose non-standards overwhelmingly enough to basically kill the standards body (W3C) and push us into the land of “Whatever’s Worked on by Google” (WHATWG in essence). Until governments start funding competitive efforts (to relieve monetary pressure, which comes with its own problems) into projects pushing for your telos principles, profit (as an imperfect indicator of people’s choices) will continue to be the North Star for technology.

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nonrandomstring4y ago

I get the feeling there's a kind of bleak, hopeless circularity in your thinking, but I can't quite nail it. It feels like saying;

Universal suffrage is great idealism, but it doesn't matter unless women vote for it.

That's to say, the means by which change might occur are also the goal of that change. That's a hard place to get out of.

> idealism doesn’t matter without users.

It absolutely does, because "idealism" is precisely that force in the world that exists despite and in hope for better things than the status-quo. It's the engine of all progress, and is almost always a minority concern in the face of a herd mentality. I'm glad you like my idealism though, because some (fake pragmatists with narrow horizons and fear of losing the privilege) treat idealism as a fault, whereas we see it as a badge of honour.

> the majority of users have repeatedly chosen

For very small values of "chosen". People accept what they're given. Not even the "consumers" themselves believe in the myth of demand driven markets now. They mostly adopt stuff to fit in and be like their friends. If pressed, they'll rationalise. Today, digital literacy does not extend to social, economic and political awareness of why choice might even matter. Some of us are trying to fix that (see [1]), and I am happy that in Europe we are gaining greater strength.

Number of users matters for making money. I get that. And I can see why many people here fixate on that. Making money is nice. But one shouldn't let it distort ones better judgement. And one should know when enough is enough and when greed is working against our future capacity to make money.

> choose UX innovations over things like standards and interoperability.

That's a false dichotomy. Those things aren't even on the same axis. It is the sloth of companies wanting to lock-in users that gives motive to break interoperability standards. That doing so is necessary for innovation is a blatant falsehood peddled in so many of the comments I've read here today. You say yourself, that it's a thin veneer over standards. Not to recognise the value of foundations paid for with generations of public money and the role of government in maintaining the very conditions that allowed tech firms to prosper is ungrateful and parochial. I'm getting downvoted because that hurts to hear.

[1] https://www.humanetech.com/technologists

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