This is irrelevant. The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing". I am a nerd, but while I have an interest in a laptop that is general purpose, I have no interest in a phone that is general purpose. I want it locked down. I also have to keep my mom online, and tend to steer her towards her iPad rather than her iMac, because there's just been less tech support (on my part) required for it.
General Purpose computing and Privacy have little to do with each other. There is more malware installed on General Purpose computers than there are iPhones. Facebook tracks you on your computer just as much as your phone. However, the phone is becoming a place where they can't track you, and there's little Facebook can do about it. Contrast with Sony found installing exploitable root-kits on PCs (to stop you copying CDs IIRC).
> The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing".
But they do have an interest in their own well-being, and the well-being of society. I think the author's point is that widespread access to general purpose computing is a good thing for society in general, and that it will be a bad thing if access to general purpose computing disappears.
The problems I see are (painting with a large brush) are that in general:
- the public doesn't realize what a gift general purpose programming languages are, how much power they have to solve problems, and how much fun they can be
- the public doesn't care to give children access to these systems who might otherwise grow up learning and appreciating them
- the public doesn't understand that the ability to read and write code constitutes a literacy of its own and can profoundly impact how one thinks in a positive way
But these problems are close corollaries of other problems with society in general: people don't read good books like they ought, people don't learn musical instruments or other skills as often as they should, and many people are forced to work so hard to pay for basic necessities that spending any time on productive leisure (what luminaries called "improving oneself" in prior centuries) is effectively impossible.
This exactly. I read the essay and said to myself “meh”. Having a phone that I can’t mess up is actually pretty dang nice.
High performance computing is definitely locked down. An M1 Mac is pretty dang nice.
But for general purpose computing you don’t need those fancy graphics. I’ve been thinking of microcontrollers as the equivalent of our 1980s general purpose computers more so than the rpi. The rpi still requires a lot of software. An mcu just works. And we can create a nice little gpu for it with an fpga.
Big corporations aren’t locking you out of this world. They are actually helping you get this awesome stuff for pennies as a consequence of the massive supply chain.
Absolutely. I need a good general purpose computer to program on. But for my phone and family, I 100% want to outsource security and updates to someone competent.
General Purpose computing and Privacy have little to do with each other. There is more malware installed on General Purpose computers than there are iPhones. Facebook tracks you on your computer just as much as your phone. However, the phone is becoming a place where they can't track you, and there's little Facebook can do about it. Contrast with Sony found installing exploitable root-kits on PCs (to stop you copying CDs IIRC).