Yet another section! What? 2 on the same night?
Added 2024-09-05 22:57:31 +0000 UTCHey all,
This is the last section I'll be sharing before I release the entire video, which, as I mentioned, will have over an hour of new content you haven't seen yet.
Wish me luck. I need to get this out before the US election in November.
Comments
Free Basics reminds me of the business practice of dumping. This nonprofit initiative seemed like it was going to promote something neutral, broad, and international: The Internet. In reality, it promoted a tiny little corner of the Internet, Facebook, to reel people in. I can also see a parallel between this and the way software by Avid, Autodesk, Digidesign, etc. became established as “industry standards” in academia. Those companies did something ostensibly charitable: offer their software at enormous discounts to students, or flat out give institutions freebies. I myself have used Photoshop, Pro Tools, and various other programs for free on school computers, and I currently have free EAGLE (printed circuit board CAM software) on my computer because of my .edu email. But what happens when you graduate, become a guest in the library, and your .edu email runs out? You will have to either pay the full price or sail the seven seas like some kind of plagiarist! You want to keep up your Photoshop skills, but can’t justify the 240/yr? Too bad! You can buy Affinity’s suite on sale, but if you’re going into any kind of graphic editing, 2d animation or photography job, that won’t fly, since all the cats there use Photoshop! Was the move to donate software or sell it to universities at an even steeper discount a charitable act on the part of software companies? Or was it a way of getting people “hooked” like a drug dealer on a specific piece of software that, despite being “industry standard”, does things very differently from software with the same capabilitlies? Perhaps they’re donating dependence on Photoshop? And I can’t help but see some parallels between this Free Basics endeavor (Not The Whole Internet), the OLPC program and Nestle getting women in developing countries to use formula instead of human milk… I could write a dissertation on Tumblr about this!
Natalie Page
2024-09-09 04:07:39 +0000 UTCHmmm. Perhaps I should have signposted this better. My answer is basically the conclusion at the end - where I talk about the dangers of one platform being so dominant, it can eliminate voices it doesn't like - finishing with the line 'I think free basics should be rejected wherever it's met'.
Tantacrul
2024-09-08 07:50:16 +0000 UTCHi Martin, Around the four-minute mark, you mention the opposing view - that any internet is better than no internet, even if it is Facebook-centric. You said you were going to return to that in a few minutes. Did I not pick up the discussion, or does it come in a future section? Cheers, Nick
Nick Dow
2024-09-08 05:33:56 +0000 UTCGood luck :)
Sébastien Le Maguer
2024-09-06 04:41:51 +0000 UTC
