ForgeFed is an upcoming federation protocol for enabling interoperability between version control services. It’s built as an extension to the ActivityPub protocol, allowing users of any ForgeFed-compliant service to interact with the repositories hosted on other instances.
The goal of the project is to support all of the major activities connected to project management, including bug reports, merge requests, and notifications across instances.
https://forgefed.org/
The goal of the project is to support all of the major activities connected to project management, including bug reports, merge requests, and notifications across instances.
https://forgefed.org/
The goal of consumer tech development used to be pretty simple: design and build something of value to people, giving them a reason to buy it. A new refrigerator is shiny, cuts down on my energy bills, makes cool-looking ice cubes. So I buy it. Done. A Roomba promises to vacuum the cat hair from under my sofa while I take a nap. Sold!
But this vision of tech is increasingly outdated. It’s not enough for a refrigerator to keep food cold; today’s version offers cameras and sensors that can monitor how and what I’m eating, while the Roomba can now send a map of my house to Amazon.
The issue here goes far beyond the obvious privacy risks. It’s a sea change in the entire model for innovation and the incentives that drive it. Why settle for a single profit-taking transaction for the company when you can instead design a product that will extract a monetizable data stream from every buyer, returning revenue to the company for years? Once you’ve captured that data stream, you’ll protect it, even to the disadvantage of your customer. After all, if you buy up enough of the market, you can well afford to endure your customers’ anger and frustration. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/21/1061260/innovation-technology-what-happened/
But this vision of tech is increasingly outdated. It’s not enough for a refrigerator to keep food cold; today’s version offers cameras and sensors that can monitor how and what I’m eating, while the Roomba can now send a map of my house to Amazon.
The issue here goes far beyond the obvious privacy risks. It’s a sea change in the entire model for innovation and the incentives that drive it. Why settle for a single profit-taking transaction for the company when you can instead design a product that will extract a monetizable data stream from every buyer, returning revenue to the company for years? Once you’ve captured that data stream, you’ll protect it, even to the disadvantage of your customer. After all, if you buy up enough of the market, you can well afford to endure your customers’ anger and frustration. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/21/1061260/innovation-technology-what-happened/
MIT Technology Review
We used to get excited about technology. What happened?
Innovation that truly serves us all is in scarce supply. That’s a problem.