The Generations of CS Are Coming to 'End of Life'
Did not die or did not fully perish perhaps (many have retired from this occupation; they find it repelling), "but were certainly displaced by frauds, poseurs, and charlatans from the cult in Redmond," as one reader put it
Nowadays everything that is a computer is somehow called (or being framed as) "hey hi"; prior to that every server was presented to everyone as a "cloud", virtually every device was dubbed "IoT", and any computer program was "app" and also somehow - by virtue of spurious adjectives-spewing - "smart".
Companies spent billions of dollars on this, with brochures, TV ads, and all sorts of "popular culture" means for perverting conversations about technology. Most people played along to sound smart, cool, not "falling behind" (as that would damage perceived social status).
Companies, once they control the media, can control minds at a very deep level. Debt giants (disguised as tech giants) brainwashed billions of people worldwide for well over a decade.
They were faking progress and adoption, compensating with marketing budgets for resistant few who spoke out against the hype, the deceit, the paid-for SPAM both online and offline. They had vastly more "broadcasting" capacity than opinioned technical bloggers combined. Heck, sometimes they paid those bloggers to relay their propaganda (pay-to-say).
The discipline of CS (Computer Science) is under attack. It is besieged. It has long been besieged*. Some people, including some I've worked with and have unfortunately experienced for years, want to see CS (especially the "S" in CS) go away, as marketeering and buzzwords are so much easier. For them anyway. A lot of my legal battles are against people who are neither qualified in computing nor experienced (they fake it) and they lack experience/understanding of them (they use their own ignorance to disclaim responsibility).
When "CS" was replaced with "IT" or "ICT" we already saw a transition. When the communities got marginalised or 'hacker culture' was replaced by 'suits' computers were increasingly about restrictions, which beget monopolies. From Peak Computing we descended onto Peek (surveillance) Computing. Computers were becoming tools by which non-scientists can exercise control - often remotely - over other homo sapiens. Alphamales were self-made dropouts; they misused what actual geeks created (or employed some) in a selfish adventure (or trip) of power.
The "CS" people didn't die. Many of them are still alive and many try to explain to people the way things used to be done and why it was so much better (in almost every way).
When nuclear scientists felt a moral duty to oppose or educate power-hungry politicians it didn't prevent the Manhattan Project (or similar) from materialising, resulting in nuclear bombs that still infest the planet, just waiting to be "used" (not experimentally; the experiments are now done).
As autocrats gain more seats in more nations the scientists are elbowed out of the way and risk of another nuclear "exchange" (Mutually-Assured Destruction) grows.
Refusing orders at work when the aim is immoral is a commendable think. Resigning from one's work to avoid following illegal or unethical commands is typically an option (but not for everybody; we must also recognise peer pressure, family pressure, mortgages and so on).
Will there be a more formal and widely-recognised movement like the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) and, if not, how can we effectively form one?
Computer-related sciences would hardly be the first branch of science or practical discipline hijacked by malicious interests. A century ago IBM weaponised tabulation machines (meant to make work faster) for eugenics. █
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* "And MSFT [paying collages using money that Microsoft did not have] has made a point of preventing colleges and universities from being allowed to teach CS or bring new people into CS," as one reader put it. They compelled some classes to not only teach [sic] (train people for) Microsoft but also name their buildings and pertinent theatres after a serial pervert.