Technology @lemmy.world robotica @lemmy.world 2mo ago

[rant?] I'm hopeful for the future of technology

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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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.
- 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.
  
  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.

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