My prediction, is that, in the not too far future, perhaps 20-25 years, with the "blessing" of national security, ads business and other big players, devices will be further locked down and tracked, INCLUDING personal computers.
A lot of people already don't own a computer nowadays, except for the pocket one. In that future PCs, if they still exist, perhaps are either thin clients connecting to the vast National Net, where you can purchase subscriptions for entertainment, or completely locked down pads that ordinary people do not even have the tool to open properly. Oh, all "enhanced" with AI agents of course. You might even get a free one every 5 years -- part of your basic income package.
They won't make learning low level programming or hardware hacking illegal, because they are still valuable skills, and some people need to do that anyway. But for ordinary people it's going to be a LOT tougher. The official development languages of your computer system are some sort of Java and Javascript variants that are SAFE. You simply don't get exposed to the lower level. Very little system level API is going to be exposed because you won't have to know. If you have some issues, submit a ticket to the companies who program the systems.
We are already halfway there. Politicians and super riches are going to love that.
Single player video games are not going to die. And the market seems to punish any push for always online model (which is obviously a scam). I say this because a bulk of market for personal computing is driven by video games.
anybody who really wants to learn to code will just install linux on an old clunker. every uni and highschool student i know who means business does this.
I'm scared too - the iPhone is pretty completely locked down. Microsoft Realllly wanted TPMs to be mandatory for win 11. It seems like only a matter of time that your OS will be inconfigurable.
There are billions of CPUs floating around and none of them are going to be magically prevented from running Linux. New computers in some markets like US and UK, I don’t know, maybe if a hot cyberwar with china breaks out there will be a ban on new PCs that can’t be secured by the NSA but I can’t relate to the hand wringing about losing control, we still live in a capitalist society and there’s enough people that hate Windows randomly breaking shit that there will be other options besides CoPilot PCs and Apple Intelligent Macs.
> There are billions of CPUs floating around and none of them are going to be magically prevented from running Linux.
It's called secure boot and there's nothing magical about it. It's already here. You have it in "your" CPU. For now, you can still disable it after it boots the signed UEFI/bootloader. It won't be long until that option is gone forever.
Anyone who wants to learn coding cannot do so in a locked down environment. This is why an iPad is actually detrimental to digital competency in the long run compared to personal computers. They aren't even safer, since these devices often have payment information baked into their being and your kid spending roblox bucks.
Also, you cannot experiment in a safe environment. Safe environments are adequate if your are infantile. But you stay that way if you don't get freedom.
i dont know any 15 year olds without access to a laptop in some form. mac os has a very posix shell. i did K&R c on an old macbook. stop wasting time worrying about this and go buy a 50 pack of old office thinkpads and give them to every teenager you know. and if they say no just break their phone in half. thank me later son i love you papa i wish i knew how much i loved arch linux before you died.
True and I do distribute machines where I can and people are generally very happy about it. MacOS is still a very useful system compared to iOS. I hope they adapt the latter to the former and not the other way around.
My prediction, is that, in the not too far future, perhaps 20-25 years, with the "blessing" of national security, ads business and other big players, devices will be further locked down and tracked, INCLUDING personal computers.
A lot of people already don't own a computer nowadays, except for the pocket one. In that future PCs, if they still exist, perhaps are either thin clients connecting to the vast National Net, where you can purchase subscriptions for entertainment, or completely locked down pads that ordinary people do not even have the tool to open properly. Oh, all "enhanced" with AI agents of course. You might even get a free one every 5 years -- part of your basic income package.
They won't make learning low level programming or hardware hacking illegal, because they are still valuable skills, and some people need to do that anyway. But for ordinary people it's going to be a LOT tougher. The official development languages of your computer system are some sort of Java and Javascript variants that are SAFE. You simply don't get exposed to the lower level. Very little system level API is going to be exposed because you won't have to know. If you have some issues, submit a ticket to the companies who program the systems.
We are already halfway there. Politicians and super riches are going to love that.