Tivoisation and Decommodification in Clown Computing
SOME hours ago in publicly-logged IRC channels (and some that are not) we discussed the skills nowadays associated with Web design/development. Things changed a lot since 20+ years ago. Instead of people writing Web pages and coding with text editors we have "frameworks"... and hosting is sometimes done with "clown" interfaces. We spoke of "skills that are no longer of value" (to the industry) and how software experience goes "out of fashion" more quickly than in other trades. The thing about software is, it moves too fast, which is one of the arguments against software patents.
Then there is the hosting side, which seems to have gotten a lot more proprietary [1, 2] and opaque. An associate asserted that "the existence of AWS is a problem since it is basically a tivoization of Linux distros" (not just AWS, either).
Well, that's an apt analogy because I know from personal experience (at work) how much worse it has gotten. Some firms or organisations lost sight of what "servers" or "hosting" even mean.
"AWS and the other proprietary cloud services are all about decommodification. If they asked for an SSH key to add when launching an new instance and all work was done via SSH that'd be a completely different matter. As it is now, the UI and all aspects of the work flow have become fully proprietary," explained the associate.
We actually covered this several times in the past. Young developers are taught to look down on (or frown at) people who understand how computers work, how computer programs run, how hosting is done at the lower level. This discourages learning the skills necessary to become one's own host or create companies that compete with "Clown Computing" (typically Pentagon spying) giants. One good thing about Gemini Protocol is that it lowers the entry barrier. They ought to teach things like these at schools.
The art of the trade is not dead. But the artist is besieged. █
