IntentionalTech.exe
Big Tech's Intentional Creation of Dependency
molly got me thinking about why we felt like we needed tech oligarchs in the first place: these college kids, scrappy, hustle-culture entrepreneurs that we launched into the fiscal stratosphere with our data, our user-generated content. they needed us.
it was always meant to make this—the internet, doing things online—convenient, easier, less dependent upon a foundation of knowledge that can fall away, beckoning with flashing notifications and feature additions to make you feel like, i don't really have to use anything else.
the point was to make you depend on them, not your knowledge or desire to build, to do the things you want to online rather than invest the time and energy into decentralizing from these huge services.
they want us to feel as though we can't do it on our own. a learned helplessness that permeates through the initial development of the corporate web wrapped up in language around convenience and quickness. the product is needed because the creators say it's needed, rather than an actual need being serviced.
all of this is frustrating, and i know i'm preaching to the choir here. it just feels like we have to evangelize on social media to get others to see, and that alone can feel discouraging, but it's working. the cafe continues to grow every day. i see folks on bluesky talk about building their websites for the first time in february 2025.
we just have to keep at it. <3