Comment by wolvesechoes
12 hours ago
I always wondered where this belief that progress is given comes from.
Nothing is given in this world. Every real fruit of progress (freedom, democracy, public health etc, not iPhone) was fought for and paid with effort, sweat and blood. People were often put in jail, tortured and murdered. I am not sure what exact price you have in mind when you state you've dedicated your life to FOSS, but I somehow doubt it is comparable. It is naive to think that once we achieved something, we don't need to keep fighting in purpose to keep it. This is equally true about democracy, eradication of diseases through vaccination, and free computing.
Of course only geeks care. My point was that it was always like that. Every big societal and political change was enacted by a relatively small, but coordinated and motivated minority. Majority always is passive, and even if it comes in, it comes in at the very end of the process. The problem is not a small number of geeks that care, but rather geeks' reluctance to organize and act politically. Hell, in this demographics political is always suspicious and unworthy. There won't be any success until this changes.
It is naive to think that once we achieved something, we don't need to keep fighting in purpose to keep it.
I agreed with this in my post, but I suppose not using those words. However, I discussed how people used to pay attention to experts, and they really, really did. Of course nothing is absolute, but there is a massive change, from what I see, between 50 years ago and now.
The average person didn't want to seem "stupid", by trying to claim that germs didn't exist (because they can't see them), or that the world was flat, or whatever may be said.
Yet now, as I said, we have all these sources of just plain stupid, spewing stupid as knowledge. Before, we could enact change and at least get the public behind it.
Now (and you seem to agree here!) it's harder to do so. And we're losing ground!
So I disagree that it's about us not organizing. Very successful ways to organize and educate now fail due to this slop. It's not us, it's the world, fading, dimming, dropping back into the gibberish of the masses.