Whilst watching: Buy Now! The Netflix Documentary https://www.netflix.com/watch/81554996
It became really evident to me that Open Source is not just something that can save the planet, but is an imperative factor and has an essential role to fulfil.
The obvious one, we need to waste less, in all areas of technology; it is not acceptable to be creating products with a planned obsolescence, for example the issues from iPhones going out of date every single year, go beyond the problems of sustainability into geo-political stability and as we go on, corporations are essentially going to trigger wars? Is the insatiable pursuit of profit, of wealth, whatever that is, going to be the thing that leads to the end of civilization itself?
The first species to end its own existence?
And it all seems so futile, a handful of people have control; they have a seat at the table that discusses what happens and an even smaller subset of those people at the table, has any real control over the political directions.
We live in a time when collaboration and unity could not be more important, but the direction of travel is further and further apart, greater divisions are sown for narrow-sighted aims. Are there really people that just think, use all of the resources until it’s all gone and then move on? Who consider it to be a “not in my lifetime” issue, so screw it?
It’s not just their grandchildren who will suffer their consequences, it’s mine too and that makes it personal; furthermore, this is going to affect my children, never mind grand or great-grand relatives, we might not even make it that far at this rate.
I can kind of now understand, how parents felt in the late sixties, when they were worried about ‘the bomb’ and they weren’t even faced with narcistic dictators having their clammy hands on the codes and buttons.
To try and get back on point, the continuous pursuit of selling things, largely meaningless things, like Mobile Devices, like Ornaments and Adornments, or Cars… and range of other things, is clearly driving the environmental issues into much more dangerous territory.
We need to be using less, consuming less and certainly only really using things that are essential, and sustainable. So the luxuries have to go, especially if they’re not sustainable, recyclable or reusable. The greed has to go. This planet cannot support billionaires, or even multi-millionaires for that matter
To the “You first brigade…”, yes fine, me first, but don’t dodge your responsibility, you owe it to your families, to your friends, to your communities too.
So, how can Open Source help? What is the potential impact? Can we remove some level of power, from our overlords?
Open Source at its basic level, allows us to repurpose technology, to elongate its lifespan, reducing the frequency with which we replace devices perhaps. It’s only a short throw then, to see, that if we’re not buying, or consuming software that is published by the big corporations, we’re reducing their control, little by little. For example, if we use a Linux Distro on an aging machine, it does provide a little longer to use it, we do get security updates for a considerable amount of time, beyond. But, what would be really exciting, is starting life with that distro, playing games all of a sudden is actually feasible on say Ubuntu, albeit via Steam, or via XBOX cloud or PS cloud services; its a baby step, in the right direction, but once people are there, then new marketplaces exist and developers will target the platforms more natively – because they want your money… But then, other people exist in those spaces, lots of them, who do it for the love of the art and the joy of creativity; often these are the same people who work for triple As, just in their downtime, as personal projects, without their corporate sponsors’ interference.
TBC…