Bonum Certa Men Certa

Peak Code — Part III: After Code

Article/series by Dr. Andy Farnell

This work is licensed under version 4.0 of the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license

Series parts:

  1. Peak Code — Part I: Before the Wars
  2. Peak Code — Part II: Lost Source
  3. YOU ARE HERE ☞ After Code


Robot



Summary: "Surveillance perimeters, smart TVs (Telescreens built to Orwell's original blueprint) watched over our living rooms. Mandatory smart everything kept us 'trustless'. Safe search, safe thoughts. We withdrew. Inside, we went quietly mad."

The mind can rule the body. Psychogenic death happens when the software gives up. After a cancer diagnosis or a voodoo curse some people age ten years in a month and pass away even while quite healthy. We think empires fall from over-reach, but that is only half a truth. History books say the edges crumbled, but in fact Rome died first and things fell apart from the inside. The centre can only hold strong where there is uncorrupted will. The fish rots from its head.



"Before this self-devouring monster, the imperfect technological society of the twenty first century had built itself on the energy and love of those they called the "hackers", many of whom lived and worked in the twentieth century."People always asked me, before the collapse, "But how will we build a Utopia". I laughed. Real people are not driven by visions of Utopia, but by the simple faults at the edges of life. At heart we are explorers who must find new risks, healers who seek out our injured, teachers who seek the attention of those hungry for knowledge, and protectors who see danger and vulnerable others to put ourselves between. Those are our itches at which we scratch. It is in service of each others' suffering that we find meaning.



A Utopia? A society so perfect, so abstracted, so managed, so owned, so tranquil, so fair, so incorruptible in its smartness, so beyond mere technology - is a society not worth living in or for. It is a simulation and performance of a society that offers no reason for itself but that everything be in service of it.



Before this self-devouring monster, the imperfect technological society of the twenty first century had built itself on the energy and love of those they called the "hackers", many of whom lived and worked in the twentieth century. Simply, they were workers, though some elevated themselves to titles like "developer", "CTO" or "computer scientists". We were always workers.



"Hackers were all sorts of things, but foremost they were people. Software is people."Some were intrinsically motivated autotelic personalities engaged in the love of problem solving. Some were quiet moral labourers committed to the challenge of building a "better world". Some were social refuseniks who hid behind avatars and anonymity. Others were dissatisfied and restive women and men, motley crews of misfits and egotists hungry to be known and admired. Hackers were all sorts of things, but foremost they were people. Software is people.



People built and ran the machine. Now, there it was, at last. Tamed. A system so slick, elegant, and otherly. It could provide everything we asked for, except for one thing - its absence. Any whim, impulse or fantasy… satisfied now. Delivered instantly, no pause, no shame, pay later. Anything you like, except for one simple request, that it shut itself off and leave us alone. Soon, all people talked about was the machine, it's constant demands for our happiness, acquiescence and smiling fealty.



"A dearth of new coders was eclipsed by the crisis of maintainers, growing old and retiring."Nobody noticed the shrinking number of human accounts at the Ministry of Code. A dearth of new coders was eclipsed by the crisis of maintainers, growing old and retiring. Schools had not taught programming for decades. Universities had dumbed down computer science courses to certificate training. Hackers were brought into the fold, domesticated and made "ethical".



By the time the BigTeks realised that education was a real hard and unprofitable profession they had trained a generation of mindless, and mostly useless digital mechanics who could not think beyond their parochial, proprietary instructions.



By the time the tech press reported just how serious the recruitment problem was, it was 20 years too late. Some old guy named Linus, someone of importance if I recall correctly, retired, leaving half-hearted replacements and a bloated, fragmented project that soon faltered. Your aunt Alice fought in the Kernel Wars you know, but we don't talk about Alice.



"Trillionaire philanthropists opened their bank accounts, "Money no object" they said. But it was no use. Old hackers want walks in the park with the grandkids."The "war" that never happened began when BigTek and the governments needed a narrative to explain what was happening. They wanted the old hackers back. But they were dying-off by then. Forty years too late, they offered to pay for Free software. "Code whatever you like" they said, "We'll pay whatever it takes".



Trillionaire philanthropists opened their bank accounts, "Money no object" they said. But it was no use. Old hackers want walks in the park with the grandkids. "Not my business any longer", they said. We tried to train new hackers, but those kids weren't interested, ambivalent now towards technology that only seemed to control their lives. It was "no fun to compute". The excitement of possibility, of "making a difference", was gone.



So the powers needed an enemy, a scapegoat. Goldberg's Neo-Luddite subversives, saboteurs, and malcontents were now blamed for the software crisis. Supposedly "a secret resistance" were coding new systems that would save us. Was that a worry or a wish? But beyond the fantasies of the press, nobody could find Eponymous. The CIA, adept at entrapment and honeypots, created fake "militant hacker groups" to draw in and reorient high-IQ candidates, but nobody joined.



"We tried to train new hackers, but those kids weren't interested, ambivalent now towards technology that only seemed to control their lives."The sun was setting on the age of software. We'd enjoyed all we dreamed of. Drones flew in the skies over our houses, protecting us. Fingerprint door handles kept out the bad men. Everything was on the Face-Chain. Surveillance perimeters, smart TVs (Telescreens built to Orwell's original blueprint) watched over our living rooms. Mandatory smart everything kept us 'trustless'. Safe search, safe thoughts. We withdrew. Inside, we went quietly mad. We went Meta. And then Meta metastasised, into the heart of our care, until there was care no more. Nobody cared. Nobody coded. And the machine whimpered.

Recent Techrights' Posts

FOSDEM is Called "FOSDEM" Because of Richard Stallman (RMS)
The overlap there seems timely; yesterday RMS spoke in French-speaking (in part) Switzerland where questions in French were accepted
January 20: Richard Stallman Talk in Europe
evening time in Europe, around midday in the United States and Canada
Slopwatch: Too Lazy to Write Real Articles, Offloading to Chatbots Instead (LLM Slop About "Linux")
The Web was already full of garbage before the LLM frenzy. Now it's even worse.
RMS 'Inauguration' in Montpellier (Government Administration) on January 20th
Happy hacking
 
Links 18/01/2025: Restoring the Great Wall of China and Economic Expansion in China
Links for the day
Guardian Digital (linuxsecurity.com) is Spamming the Web With Microsoft's Promotional LLM Slop About UEFI 'Secure' Boot (Which is Against Real Security)
This is an attack on honest journalism
Links 18/01/2025: TikTok's Endgame, "Car Freedom", and Spying in Cars 'Fines' GM (Settlement)
Links for the day
Links 18/01/2025: Apple Getting Out of Hey Hi (AI) Slop (Too Much Misinformation), Chaffbots/Chatbots Try to Settle Copyright Infringement Lawsuits
Links for the day
What Fake News Sites Are Doing to GNU/Linux
The LLM slop about Linux serves two purposes
Links 18/01/2025: Microsofters Upset at Microsoft's Ridiculous Rebrands (Excuse for Massive Price Hikes), Chaffbot Company ('Open'AI) Faces More Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/01/2025: Surge in Illnesses, ctags, and Gemsync
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 17, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 17, 2025
Even Technical Articles and HowTos From UNIXMen Nowadays Seem to be LLM Slop
We've just permanently removed the RSS feed of UNIXMen
The FSF's 2024 End-of-Year Fundraiser Succeeds: Over $400k to Support Software Freedom
That's worth bringing up again because the SFC is trying to 'crash' this achievement of the FSF
[Meme] Fentanylware (TikTok) Banned in the United States, Next Up European Union (EU)
And the United Kingdom (UK)
President Biden is Right, "Free Press is Crumbling" and the United States Exports Its Media-Hostile Culture to Other Continents
perhaps Biden should pay closer attention to how Donald Trump-inspired Americans take their battles to other continents
Links 17/01/2025: TikTok Banned by the United Stated (SCOTUS Rejects Appeal)
Links for the day
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc (SFC) Makes It Obvious It's Just a Copycat Trying to Exploit or Leech Off the FSF's (and GNU's) Work
They swim next to the rich people (who "match")
Links 17/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Herds Its (Drug) Users Into Even More Harmful "Apps"
Links for the day
Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Uses Microsoft-Controlled Front Groups and LLM Slop in Order to Spread Microsoft-Directed Anti-Linux FUD
Microsoft garbage likely produced by Microsoft LLMs, spewing out Microsoft FUD
Likely Fake 'Article' About Linux Mint 22.1
BetaNews fired up its plagiarism machine (LLM)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 16, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 16, 2025
Links 16/01/2025: Conflicts, Overpopulation, and Software Patents
Links for the day
[Meme] Lock-down With DRM Server/s (in a Nutshell)
Companies like Microsoft and Apple have a 'God complex'
Thank You, London! There Was No Way to Still Reliably Host Gemini From Home (on a Raspberry Pi 4) Due to Scale
The only regret we've long had is that we hadn't made the move earlier
The Summit of Future (Kerala, 2025): Dr. Richard Stallman (RMS) to Give Keynote Talk
promotional video was uploaded
Richard Stallman's Talk This Coming Monday (European 'Tour')
bunch of talks in Europe
Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part II - Down to the Very Core, Including the Hardware (CPU, GPU, Peripherals, and More)
instead of distinguishing themselves and antagonising these broadly reviled "antifeatures", both Canonical and IBM decided to join Microsoft in advocating lockdown
FSF, Guardian of the GNU Project, to Reach $400,000 in Winter Fundraiser Ahead of 40th Anniversary
The GNU Project Turns 42 later this year
Links 16/01/2025: "Meduza, IRL" and the Clock is Ticking on TikTok in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/01/2025: Yesterday's Gone, The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E Howard
Links for the day
Computer Users Aren't Zoo Animals
Animals don't belong inside cages in zoos, either
Links 16/01/2025: Scale and Scope of Microsoft Layoffs Revealed (Two Waves of Layoffs in 2025 Already)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/01/2025: Meta Has a Pixelfed Problem and Space Time Scoping
Links for the day
Anti-Linux 'Articles' in linuxsecurity.com (Guardian Digital, Inc) Are Composed by Bots, Probably Microsoft's
linuxsecurity.com has become a mindless stream of LLM slop
"New Year, New Career"
published a few hours ago
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 15, 2025