I found the video “The Last Kilometer, The Last Chance” incredibly insightful, especially considering it was filmed in 2016 but so accurately anticipates the technological landscape of 2024/2025. It predicts the control, addiction, and monetization that data and technology now exert over people’s lives. While watching, this raised a crucial question: how do we reconcile the global expansion of internet access—often seen as a tool for educational and economic empowerment—with the growing evidence that this expansion primarily fuels corporate and state surveillance?

While free software offers an alternative, many people—despite the simplicity of the switch—remain reluctant to make the change. The root of this reluctance is the poison of convenience. Even when confronted with the realities of data collection, location tracking, and constant privacy breaches, people continue to use iPhones, MacBooks, and other “smart” devices. Why? Because it’s convenient.

As Professor Moglen explains in the video, we missed the opportunity to build the internet we wanted: one that fosters individual agency and protects privacy. Instead, we are left grappling with an internet we do not want—one that treats users as subjects for behavioral experiments, continuously tracked and manipulated by algorithms.

Given the stranglehold that convenience has on society, starting at a young age, can technological development ever remain neutral? Or does it inevitably reflect the interests of those in control? Ultimately, are we complicit in the very systems we seek to resist?

-- ZoieGeronimi - 25 Sep 2024

I have a few thoughts after reading your post.

(1) I’m curious whether convenience is inherently a poison. It’s fair to say that convenience often sways people to make choices that make them worse off in the long run, however, I think that an outright labeling of convenience as a negative might actually be analytically harmful to us going forward. Humanity has always sought to create more convenient ways to achieve their goals. Perhaps what we actually want are ways to achieve convenience in our lives in healthy ways. I think framing it like this helps us more readily appreciate that the target of the resistance you discuss shouldn’t be the Internet, but rather the coercive and deceptive practices employed by those who provide services via the Internet.

(2) What form do you think this resistance should take? What would that look like and how could we make it effective?

(3) I think it is a clearly apparent truth that we are, in large part, complicit in the very systems that some seek to resist. I’m sure there is value in knowing this, but I wonder what exactly it provides us. But let’s say that everybody is aware that we are, in fact, partially culpable in the current state of affairs, how do we teach current and future generations the value of “resisting” these technologies?

-- BenMingov - 30 Sep 2024