Decent technologies should leverage the fall of intellectual "property".

CJDNS, IPFS, Dat, SSB, et. al. are paving a way to a parallel crisis for propertarians as Automation is paving one for proletarians / lumpen proletarians.

@fabianhjr how does automation create a crisis for the proletariat? automation will make the propertarians obsolete and liberate the proles!

@gc as long as they remain dispossessed of the means of production, specially including automated means of production, they would be increasingly pushed towards the lumpenproletariat.

@fabianhjr @gc Also proles kept out of the loop of finance, logistics, and everything that goes in the data centre. Which is why decentralisation is so important.

The workers may control the real economy, but they can do little with it if they don't control the means of information.

@h @fabianhjr agreed, power is logistic these days. which is why I think it's so frickin important that we own our servers, btw. if mastodon has slayed fb and birdsite and reigns supreme 20 years from now, it won't mean shit if all the instances are hosted on aws

@gc @fabianhjr Also making our own computers will become more relevant as unencumbered general purpose computing gear becomes increasingly difficult to find.

@h @fabianhjr what??? there are so so so so many unused, perfectly good general purpose computers already lying around and just going to waste that it's not even funny. most people already own several, at least in america. making our own processors is an incredibly difficult thing to do and turning an old desktop into a server is not, so let's save ourselves the trouble and worry about that once/if we run out of all the processors we already have.

@gc @fabianhjr Firstly, that's not easily reproducible for most people. Refurbishing and rehabbing a server to a reliable and useful state takes some specific know-how that is in short supply. Not everybody has the ability or desire to become a sysadmin, and that's perfectly fine, just as most people aren't car repair technicians. But everybody needs, with increasing urgency, to get their own information sorted and under control.

A computing of the people that works for the people is needed.

@h @fabianhjr I'm down, but how exactly do you plan on building this computing of the people for the people? you don't want to use what the people already have, like the countless desktops, laptops and phones lying around, as servers, bc it would be too difficult. are you proposing that we build our own processors instead? bc that's also 'not easily reproducible by most people' and definitely requires 'specific know-how that is in short supply.' like are you just gonna build a chip foundry lol

@gc @fabianhjr A few people are monitoring the progress of IC fabbing, and some integrated circuits comparable to the complexity of an early 8086 processor are on the brink of becoming possible using a process similar to 3d printing, etching on silicon. Still a long way to go, but it will eventually become possible.

Additionally, people like @jjg , @vertigo , @LinuxSocist have the know-how and want to explore collaborative or coop ownership of production.

@h How does the Raspberry Pi project/platform compare with your vision. @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc

@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
Regarding the Raspberry Pi, I believe I can speak for many others if I say that we respect the technical prowess, the generous spirit, and the great ability the people behind the project have and we have nothing but good things to say about it.

However, the Raspberry Pi depends on proprietary corporate-produced silicon, and we have no way of knowing what's in those chips. We're in the same situation we have with Intel right now.

@h Aren’t x86 chips pretty much commodity items now? @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc

@tbeckett Everything has been made a commodity, including human beings. The whole point is that some things shouldn't be.

@gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist

@h Well, generic. Commonly available and freely interchangeable. Do you want to gave bespoke processor for general computing? @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc

@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @h x86 chips are neither interchangeable (you're not going to use a Core2Duo in a P4 socket, despite compatible clock speeds) nor commodity. They are more properly classified as prolific. Intel has successfully terminated every competitor they had, save AMD, and that's only because AMD's pockets are as deep as Intel's when it comes to legal battles.