202605291959 But it happened

#microblog #link

I just watched an outstanding video essay¹ on the disconnect of the technocrats who architected the miserable, dystopian surveillance version of the internet that we have today between their statements and their ultimate complicity and culpability in them. It's important for us to not allow ourselves or others off the hook when we're complicit.

There have been a lot of good articles on the state of technology and, in particular, the current situation with AI. It's hard to have a good feeling about how things have evolved over the years. This isn't just nostalgia, because so much of tech is infinitely better, easier, more accessible than ever. But the trade-off has been the enshittification of nearly everything: software is buggy, products are basically spy- or malware, and software brain has infected everything including important places like our government.

The video shows how Eric Schmidt talks in the active voice about the his involvement in exciting and positive parts of the history of tech, but switches to a passive voice where the bad things just happened to him. It's arguable that no one in the world had more agency and power than he did to create or stop this bad state of tech we're in, yet he implicitly grants himself undeserved absolution simply by saying "but it happened" instead of "but we did it".