this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024

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[rant?] I'm hopeful for the future of technology (self.technology)

submitted 1 month ago by robotica to c/technology

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In response to this post: https://lemmy.zip/post/22916249

Disclaimer: I understand this community is more geared towards technology news and not someone's scribblings, but I'd like to bring in a different view on the same topic.

I came up with the idea to make this post while discussing something on Lemmy, and I realized that not even that long ago, something like Mastodon was so incredibly niche, even as a developer who likes niche stuff I viewed it as something more like IRC - good for people who want the "old days" back, but no longer fit for the general public.

Over the past year or more, ever since the Reddit API block fiasco began (I was an avid Boost for Reddit user) up until now, the way that I consume social media has changed drastically, huge thanks to the invention of ActivityPub and the Fediverse. I finally understood the importance of actual free speech, not unmoderated, but ungoverned¹ discussions, where even the most outlandish ideas are allowed in niche spaces, but where cheap clickbait and ragebait quickly gets cleaned up by motivated and dedicated members of communities.

As I was reading a comment on some post, the comment had a 😡 emoji in the middle of it. I took a moment to smile and appreciate just how ubiquitous UTF-8 has become, to the point that even your smart pregnancy test would probably be able to display them, in one way or another. Ain't that something?

Not even speaking about the horrible things that happen in the real world, there are also atrocious acts committed even in the tech world, where good ideas like blockchain and cryptocurrency get blown out of proportion, hyped to no end, and implemented atrociously by greedy capitalists looking for a quick buck in any way possible that makes my blood boil. However, as I'm seeing, Facebook, Google and others (at least in the EU) are slowly, but surely being forced to, uhm, not steal and lie and scam people out of their data and privacy? The solution is not perfect, but it is good, and it is pointing us in the right direction.

In conclusion, I don't think the future of digital technology and how we use it is going to be how sci-fi movies imagined, with brain-computer interfaces being a commonplace thing or whatever, at least not in the next 50-100 years in my opinion. I think that shitty NFT art scams are not going to be the next web, Web 3.0 - this is.

For a better future for all, one day at a time! Written with Boost for Lemmy 😉 @rmayayo

¹ Please correct me if I misspoke here, I hope I got my point across.

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[–] robotica 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Addendum: Today was also my first ever message received via RCS. I know the person through WhatsApp, but he messaged me via, just, phone number. I have an Android, but what does he have? I dunno, but it works, and it's awesome. I sent text, image, audio, video, read receipts with a device whose corporation is probably competing with the one of my phone.

Ahh, this is what the engineers had imagined 50+ years ago, and we're living it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At the moment there is no end-to-end encryption as part of RCS. Google created a proprietary add-on for their app. Apple is working with the standards committee to add end-to-end encryption.

RCS on android has only two supported apps, one by Google and one by Samsung. Google is actively blocking phones with custom Roms from using their RCS app.

Google also provides/hosts the RCS backend software used by most telecoms. They can host their own implementation, and most did at the start. But now a lot switched to Google to provide their RCS service.

You can’t get around Big Tech spyware if you want to use RCS.

[–] robotica 1 points 1 month ago

Thank you for the heads-up! I admit I relied on hearsay on how RCS works, I just assumed it had E2EE. Actually, I did almost send personally identifiable information over RCS, but decided not to, I'll take that as divine intervention protecting me (lol). Thanks again.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Personally, I definitely believe crypto really is the future. I know it has been hyped up a lot and that has contributed a lot to the volatility. But beneath all that, real people are building solutions to real-world problems. So much so that even companies like Visa are using crypto like USDC to do international transfers faster and cheaper.

Edit: If nothing else, it significantly reduces settlement time for money in the financial system.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I kinda agree, but think the current generation of crypto is all pretty much 1st generation early adopter stuff that's never going to scale into anything useful.

It's still too compute intensive, too slow, requires too much trust in very sketchy 3rd parties (see: every exchange ever).

Make it not use so much power it breaks the grid and becomes a race between it and AI as to who is wasting the most power to do the least useful work, build it to scale to millions of transactions, and don't make me trust people who name their websites after card games or breakfast foods in order to use it, and I'll be much more interested.

(Also monero has the right approach to privacy, so do that too.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Really and truthfully, it's only getting in that is the difficult part. Because as you mentioned, you have to go to shady sounding websites or whatever. But if your job paid you in crypto, then you trust your job because you work there. So you have to have some trust in them. Then you use them in a circular economy such as Monero is trying to build where you buy your car with your crypto that you got paid from work and you buy your house with your crypto that you got paid from work and you buy your food with your crypto you got paid from work etc. The friction point is where you go from one system into the other system. Admittedly, you could also consider it a bit of a leap of faith because you've grown up trusting this one system, and now people are saying, hey, there's this alternative system, you should give it a shot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The main problem I'd have accepting crypto from my boss is that every crypto I've seen that's not explicitly a stable coin means I could be making my salary, or you know, 80% or of my salary depending on the mood of the market on the aforementioned card game and breakfast food sites.

And before anyone goes 'oh your boss would clearly just pay you more crypto to equal your value in USD', uh, that would mean that we're still not really using crypto as a currency but as a thing that's only worth anything because it's tied to a USD value and thus what's the point? Also lmao at a boss paying you more because of a currency fluctuation that's in their favor.

We're still in the speculation phase and not the stable currency phase, outside of some stable coins, which are even harder to get into or out of, because now you have to change your crypto for the other crypto to use it somewhere that maybe takes it. And of course, transacting between different cryptos is hardly free, so it's... not just there yet.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I fully understand where you're coming from and I am attempting to help fix that by selling general goods and services for Monero at the 365 day simple moving average so that prices do not fluctuate for three months at a time.

Edit: my store link. https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore/

[–] robotica 2 points 1 month ago

I applaud your enterpreneurship, keep it going.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Crypto is the future" doesn't really mean anything. Anyone can say that and never be wrong, because humans will always be looking towards the future. What I'm interested in is when this future is supposedly arriving. People have been making big claims about this stuff for nearly two decades and it's still pretty irrelevant. Meanwhile CBDCs are actually being developed and rolled out globally. Where is crypto?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There are three countries who have launched a CBDC. They are the Bahamas, China, and Nigeria. And uptake in all three of those places is extremely low. As for the truly decentralized cryptocurrencies, they've been building for the last 15 years and are getting to the point where they are extremely easy to access and use. I remember back when every website had to write their own specific payment gateway to accept crypto and you don't need to do that anymore. Decentralized finance applications are getting more secure over time thanks to audits and hacks of competitors. More liquidity is able to enter without shoving the price around quite so much and so it is becoming more stable over time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

More than 70% of central banks are currently researching and/or designing their own CBDCs.