The issue is that the activists represent a real minority of users.
When we hang out in echo chambers, we start thinking that there are “a lot” of people that think like us.
Most folks aren’t technologically savvy. They don’t particularly want to be bothered by the “nitty gritty” of tech usership. They just want their tool to do what they want, without any fuss.
This has had a lot of terrible results. Tech moguls have made a lot of money, by taking advantage of this.
But it’s far older than smartphones. Demagogues have used this propensity for thousands of years, to keep most folks on the smelly end of the stick.
The refusal of tech activists to understand this, has, in my opinion, caused an enormous amount of damage.
People aren’t dumb, and we need to understand, and embrace that. Just because they don’t find tech as fascinating as we do, is no reason to dismiss them.
In fact, as I said, some rather rapacious tech robber barons understand this all too well.
Want to be effective? Make security and privacy easy to use. Otherwise, we’re just howling at the moon.
When we hang out in echo chambers, we start thinking that there are “a lot” of people that think like us.
Most folks aren’t technologically savvy. They don’t particularly want to be bothered by the “nitty gritty” of tech usership. They just want their tool to do what they want, without any fuss.
This has had a lot of terrible results. Tech moguls have made a lot of money, by taking advantage of this.
But it’s far older than smartphones. Demagogues have used this propensity for thousands of years, to keep most folks on the smelly end of the stick.
The refusal of tech activists to understand this, has, in my opinion, caused an enormous amount of damage.
People aren’t dumb, and we need to understand, and embrace that. Just because they don’t find tech as fascinating as we do, is no reason to dismiss them.
In fact, as I said, some rather rapacious tech robber barons understand this all too well.
Want to be effective? Make security and privacy easy to use. Otherwise, we’re just howling at the moon.