Technology: The Arms Race Of Awesome Vs Enshittification

Every year technology gets more awesome.

Every year technology sucks more.

Both things are true.

I didn’t want to spend the scratch to buy a laptop. I’m typing this on a tiny discarded junk Macbook Air. I wiped it and swapped to a light variant of Linux. It works. It works well enough that you’re reading this.

Linux is awesome… except for when people make it suck. It does every basic thing I want. However, I always use a VPN and my VPN doesn’t seem to have a Linux install. I got used to a basic level of security. Now my bare ass is hanging out in the internet (figuratively). Also I can’t run Fusion 360 without some significant tweaking. I decided not to try the tweaks because this old junker computer would probably melt if I did 3d modeling on it.

Enshittification: The world could have developed into a place where a harmless law abiding nerd like myself wouldn’t need a VPN. It didn’t. It’s just a slow arms race between things technology can do and the evil purposes to which corporations and governments twist the “neutral” technology.

I borrowed Mrs. Curmudgeon’s much better but still old Macbook. It runs Fusion 360 just fine. Also, Bambustudio and a few other things. It also runs a software called Vellum. I didn’t want to need Vellum but I do. I tried very hard but simply couldn’t drag my book through the annoying typesetting process without software to help.

So, the good news is Vellum works. The bad news is it only works on my wife’s laptop. (And it wasn’t free!!!!) The scary news is that I’m using Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Mac harder than it’s ever been used.

It’s like I borrowed an old but shiny and usable truck; then I went  “full Curmudgeon” and used it to haul ten cords of firewood and a ton of horseshit on nasty dirt roads. What can I say? I use my tools! The poor Macbook cries out to be returned to the nice lady that previously used it for simple shit like surfing.

Also, I look like a complete loon carrying around a paisley print laptop bag with a computer that has a flowery artsy cover. (I will run a computer for a decade without anything more than an occasional sticker: ideally a skull.)

Enshittification: Of course Apple no longer supports the Macbook. No OS updates are forthcoming. That’s bullshit. I’m pretty sure I could install VPN but I think I won’t. I’ve already imposed plenty just borrowing it. I’d like to hand it back soon.

Neither enshittification nor awesome: My book “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels” was written entirely in software called Scrivener. The software is a stone cold bitch to learn but it “digests” into Vellum. Scrivener works equally well in MacOS or Windows. I’ve run it in Linux but it was buggy.

So there you have it. Linux kicks ass but it only takes one piece of disagreeable software to derail it’s clear superiority. Windows 10 (on my desktop) was not half bad but I have hardware issues if I want to upgrade to Windows 11 (which everyone hates anyway). I could live with an updated (i.e. current and powerful enough) Macbook but paying more or less triple the cost for hardware will cause a stroke.

So for now, I’m in a three computer / three OS detente. Each one is OK. Each one sucks. I am loyal to no brand and no corporation; interested only in getting shit done the cheapest way possible.

Also, it’s all very well balanced. One is portable and completely under my control but weak. One is less weak but flowery and I don’t want to mess with it too much. (I still don’t have VPN on that one either.) The third is a computational processing beast (!) but it’s bolted to my home office wall and Microsoft is trying to strangle it.

I notice there have been “eras” or “phases” my abilities with technology. I remember assembling PCs with a screwdriver. (I had a used tape drive that I loved!) Little did I know that was the last bit of a “wild west” era.

Then I spent decades in a bureaucracy where IT ruled from afar; hassling us from what I can only assume was their stepped pyramid. The anointed ones of the high priesthood treated users as an annoying afterthought and they also somehow spent massively on computers that they computationally kneecapped into junk. Whenever I got my dirty unworthy worker’s mitts on them, the machine was already nearly useless.

Now it’s another phase. I can do whatever I want but the ‘net is so twisted that going without VPN is like walking the streets without underwear. Also I’m cheap so I’m blogging on junk and the simple expedient of popping open the hood and swapping parts as I can afford it hasn’t been eliminated but it has been curtailed.

Imagine all that. Back when all this started, for me it was the late 1980’s, I couldn’t possibly have predicted how it would go (I couldn’t even have imagined it).

I suppose that’s what makes life interesting. Now I’ll hit send on this post, then switch to fiddling with my 3d printer; which is absolutely science fiction except it works. (Speaking of enshittification, for every cool new thing I fix or build with the printer there’s some politician who can’t drive with a clutch but can bitch on Facebook trying to ban a useful tool that gives them the heebie jeebies. I guess it’s the ebb and flow of life.)