I dreamed of a different future
As a kid I dreamed about how these gadgets, phones like the Nokia N95, would change and improve the world. I imagined a future where everyone had phones better than the Nokia N95: cheaper, more accessible, and more powerful. A future where technology gave us more freedom and time, helped us in our daily lives, to improve, to study better, to have better health...
Reality turned out different. We ended up dumbed down by social media, designed to create addiction and dependency, so we can never put the screen down.
Planned obsolescence
They keep winning. They design devices that soon become slow and "obsolete" through software updates, to force us to buy a new one over and over. And the most absurd part: those gadgets are millions of times more powerful than a simple Nokia N95 from 2007.
Humanity generates around 62 million tonnes of electronic waste every year. To picture it, that is the weight of more than 138,000 passenger planes. And it is estimated the figure will pass 75 million tonnes per year before the decade is over.
They even rent you the trowel
Today they want to enslave us with subscriptions you have to pay month after month. And not just for entertainment: they aim to become indispensable in your work and your life.
Imagine that your work tool, the very one you earn your living with, had a monthly subscription. That you never know if they will raise the price or change the terms and conditions. That one day, due to a block, you can no longer work in your own country. It is not science fiction, it already happened:
Unity and the "Runtime Fee"
In 2023 Unity announced it would charge a fee for every install of games made with its engine, breaking what it had promised years earlier. The community exploded and it had to backtrack, but it made one thing clear: the rules can change overnight.
Source: The Register
Adobe leaves Venezuela without work
In 2019 Adobe deactivated the accounts of ALL its users in Venezuela to comply with a US executive order. Thousands of people and companies were left overnight without Photoshop, Illustrator and the rest, and at first not even with a refund.
Source: The Hacker News
Softimage, bought to die
Softimage was a leading 3D animation software. Autodesk bought it in 2008 and in 2014 announced it was discontinuing it. If your work tool is bought by the competition, it can disappear overnight.
Source: CG Channel
Windows 11 and the TPM 2.0 chip
Windows 11 requires a TPM 2.0 chip that many perfectly working computers do not have. It is estimated that the end of support for Windows 10 could send around 240 million PCs to the trash.
Source: Tom's Hardware
Imagine a bricklayer having to pay every month just to use his trowel and build a wall... It is ridiculous.
Closed source is a black box
There is a huge danger in installing programs that you do NOT know what they do, because they are closed source. They spy on you. They collect your personal information. And that information is not only used to sell you junk you do not need: it is also used to manipulate people and entire countries.
These tools are drugs. They give you the first sample for free and, before you know it, you are addicted and dependent on them. There is a tremendous dependency on operating systems like Microsoft Windows.
My answer: free software
Against all this, I defend and use free software. Tools that give you real freedom and control, not an expiration date. I do all my work with them, and they are the ones I want to make visible:
More sustainable and more accessible
Making technology more sustainable and affordable is not only about caring for the planet. Thanks to recycling and reusing what already exists, many more people could have access to technology. What for some is "trash", for others can be their first computer.
That is why, my projects
Every project I make (Whisk3D, the ports for the Nokia N95, my retro game engine) is a demonstration: "old" hardware is still capable. We do not throw it away because it stops working, we throw it away because they convince us it stopped working.
Software is art
Software is one of the many problems we have as humanity. But it is also a beautiful art, an art that few understand. Nobody really appreciates the work of art that is Mario on a Famicom, Sonic on a Sega or Crash Bandicoot on the first PlayStation, because they do not know the technical limitations of those consoles. They do not know how much developers struggled to squeeze the most out of that hardware. If they understood the context, how they were made and against what limits, maybe they would understand why they were art.
Software is art. And it is the tool that can help us improve the world... or destroy it.
What is all this for?
The goal is simple and goes beyond the code:
- Raise awareness of planned obsolescence.
- Teach how to make the most of and revive what we already have.
- Build consciousness about consumption and electronic waste.
- Seek a change toward freer, longer-lasting technology.
