computing-ideology

NOTE: Haven't quite figured this one out yet. This is not about language/editor/whatever wars.

Individualism vs. Collectivism

Indivisualism in computing is when people believe (or at least effectively act like) computing power should be (or effectively is) in the control of their own hands; collectivism in computing is the opposite.

Examples of individualism in computing:

• Right to repair
• Homebrew CPU and FOSS hardware
• from The Eternal Mainframe:

  We must establish as many precedents as we can to preserve the right to buy, build, use, sell, donate, and keep fully functional, general purpose, standalone computers.

• permacomputing (e.g. Uxn)
• Project Oberon, or any piece of software/hardware that was designed to be able to understand by a single person.
• TempleOS
• Andrew S. Tanenbaum (for his OS textbooks)
• That crazy guy who believes he shall implement everything himself.
• That crazy guy who actually implements everything himself.

Examples of collectivism in computing:

• Any kind of corporate-owned cloud services, e.g. Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.
• GitHub
• Casual webshit who would happily npm install left-pad at any time.
• People who believe they don't need a proper computer because cloud desktop exists.