Slashdot Mirror
Tech Reporting Is More Negative Now Than in the Past (betanews.com)
Wayne Williams, writing for BetaNews: A new study finds that tech reporting is generally more pessimistic now than in the past, and for two very different reasons. The new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and based on textual analysis of 250 articles from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post from 1986 to 2013, highlights how the tone of tech reporting has shifted in the past 20 years. In general, the ITIF found that in the 1980s and 1990s, coverage of technology was largely positive, but this changed from the mid-1990s to 2013, when more negative reports covering the downside of technology, its failure to live up to its promises, and potential ill effects, started to appear. The ITIF attributes this shift to two main causes, the first being that "there has been a significant increase in the number of civil-society organizations and attention-seeking scholars focused on painting a threatening picture of technology," and second, and perhaps most pertinent, "news organizations are under increased financial pressure, and as a result, reporters may have less time and fewer resources to dig deep into technology issues."
Controversy and conflict draws attention.
I feel like almost all reporting is negative nowadays. Tech and science are the two categories that still have good news being reported.
It should be more negative on average because we are flooded with so much more BS clickbait.
When you're looking ahead, you often think of a bright positive future. You think of ways in which technology can make lives better.
It's when we're 'there,' when we're in the future, that we can look back and see the impact. It's a lot easier to analyze failure that has already happened than it is to anticipate the strange ways in which people work.
Back then, things probably seemed novel and exciting to a broader array of people. These days, I get the feeling that the people who were once excited about those things (myself included) now, often, see them as little more than faster and more complicated versions of the things they replaced. Another issue is people's preconceived notions about how the latest and greatest tech ought to be; I suspect that they feel let down by the slow progress towards the things they believe to be the way of the future. If these things are true, it's not surprising that people in all circles would tend to have a pessimistic outlook on technology.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
1. civil-society organizations and attention-seeking scholars
2. news organizations without sufficient resources to "dig deep"
Combine those two, and you get "attention-seeking news organizations".
"If it bleeds, it leads." The news organizations are always attention-seeking, and simplified, salacious news gets the most attention, even if it is incorrect.
In the '80s the right was pro-science and technology, and the left (or at least the stereotype of the left) was anti-technology.
Since the Reagan era, though the right has completely swung around and is now anti-science, while the left has only weakly shifted over and embraced science.
This can be easily explained by a corporate shift from offering innovative products that fulfill consumer needs to offering products that exploit consumers in innovative ways. 20 years ago what we consider mundane "information sharing" would cause congressional hearings and indictments of CEOs.
80 and 90s we get a great deal of consumer electronics and computing products that were sold on merits. Late 2000s and into 2010s we have dominance of software that spies and manipulates user behavior for profit. Mid 2010s and we started to see "spies and manipulates" getting pushed into hardware under ruse of IoT.
Negative tone is a result of "You can't fool everyone all the time" playing out.
...companies pushing their "revolutionary" products when, in fact, they are pretty boring and run of the mill ( when not flat out crap, which is the norm ). That kind of bombastic nonsense works for a while, but eventually folks see through the bullshit so when any truly impressive product does get released, it's viewed through somewhat jaded lenses.
"Fool me once" and all that jazz.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's when we're 'there,' when we're in the future, that we can look back ...
But we're no more "in the future" now than we were yesterday, or the year before.
We've always lived in yesterday's tomorrow.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In the 80s and 90s every new piece of tech wasn't a commercialized POS that was designed first and foremost to collect your personal information. The idea of the thing was to do something FOR you, not TO you.
So you're saying it's a holo promise?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The tech industry has gone from scrappy underdog to juggernaut with 4 of the 5 biggest companies by market cap being tech companies. Unsurprisingly people's attitudes have changed, so the coverage has changed.
Or more likely the media has found that producing click bait article gets more readers and therefore more advertising revenue. The other notable thing is that technology is now more likely to be covered by a reporter who write about technology rather than an engineer who also wrote. One can produce in-depth analysis, test suites and a comparison between products, the other can rewrite the manufacturers information sheet and claim it as their own. Technology writers have become the McDonalds of reporting, cheap, quick, bland, low value.
How about just calling it "reporting"? As witnessed on this site, the ongoing use of technology to abuse people is very much a fact for the last 20 years or so. And it is accelerating exponentially.
Right now the lead article on Ars Technica is a highly positive review of the current state of VASIMR rocket engine technology: https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
But the author seems to be a frustrated SJW who couldn't resist a totally irrelevant slam at current US immigration policy, even though nobody has ever accused VASIMR developer Franklin Chang-Díaz of having sneaked across the border on foot.
Too much if it bleeds it leads, not enough actual comprehension of what they are writing about.
If you don't understand what's going on someone saying "It breaks matter down at a basic level and coverts it to energy" Is scary. If someone tells you "Invisible rays are passing through you and they can cause cellular mutations and cancers" it's scary. Then there is the basic competition between the people that do things and the people that tell you how to think about them.
but are "tech" stories about technology, or walled gardens? facebook and elections, russians and hacking, apple and walled gardens, google and walled gardens, microsoft and spyware, and so on - not about "tech" really - is the media reporting negatively on tech itself or what people do with tech?
We've almost reached the limits of physics and there's basically no viable competition because modern technologies require capex in an order of billions of dollars. What's there to marvel at or be happy about when, for instance, we've had a stagnation in the x86 CPU market since the introduction of Sandy Bridge (don't remind me of Ryzen: AMD has just reached IPC parity with two years old Intel CPUs)? Also GPUs don't grow as fast as they used to in the past, and even then in the past GPUs required passive cooling while certain modern GPUs have three slots cooling solutions with over 200 watts of power dissipation and have billions of transistors (NVIDIA Pascal Titan X has 12 billion transistors working at roughly 1500MHz).
However in my opinion it's astonishing what we've reached so far: certain modern computer games are just breathtakingly beautiful while not being too far off from being photo realistic: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Battlefield 1, The Division, Quantum Break and others. Recently, I just gave up on playing in The Division for two hours and just roamed NYC and enjoyed the scenery.
Just look at this and compare to this.
Absolute agreement. Every since the Neanderthals on Wall Street started dictating policy to Fortune 500's (and small firms let it trickle down to them), we've been at a growing war with the 1%. Latest news says there are SIX people who have more wealth than the bottom 50% of population of the WORLD! Their interests are served first. And, yes, Marx predicted that. Now, it's our job to get vocal, get active, and take our Democracy back, including the fundamental Constitutional right to privacy that has been so eroded by lawyers (and politicians, who are mostly made up of the lawyer class) in the past decades. And, not just in the U S of A, but throughout the world. It's pitchforks time, folks, and time to bring the corrupt interests (Exxon, GE, Microsoft, and thousands of others, and their kin in other countries) to heel. We, the masses, need to hone our skills at defeating their self-serving game.
Read George Lakott's take: https://twitter.com/georgelako...
and https://georgelakoff.com/2011/...
"there has been a significant increase in the number of civil-society organizations and attention-seeking scholars focused on painting a threatening picture of technology,"
Quite right!
Disclaimer: I am the inventor of the shark catapult.
In general, the ITIF found that in the 1980s and 1990s, coverage of technology was largely positive, but this changed from the mid-1990s to 2013, when more negative reports covering the downside of technology, its failure to live up to its promises, and potential ill effects, started to appear. The ITIF attributes this shift to two main causes, the first being that "there has been a significant increase in the number of civil-society organizations and attention-seeking scholars focused on painting a threatening picture of technology," and second, and perhaps most pertinent, "news organizations are under increased financial pressure, and as a result, reporters may have less time and fewer resources to dig deep into technology issues."
(emphasis added) TFA doesn't bother to ask whether the negative coverage is actually accurate.
Probably too much to ask from a vapid hit-piece on journalism, scholars and people who dare to care about civil society.
Tech is not part of an exciting new future any more. It's here, and it's .... boring.
Utter nonsense. Since the dawn of time customers have forked over the money only if they wanted the product more than the money. No amount of evil geniuses in or evil corporations can change that. I once heard your argument in the context of the uselessness of swizzle sticks - drink stirrers. The savings just on not having to wash spoons makes swizzle sticks a bargain, whether in a home bar or a nightclub. The point is that products are produced to make profit. That can only happen if the value to the customer - in the customer's eyes - is there. Who are you to suggest the customers are duped into buying what they buy?
Now, it's our job to get vocal, get active, and take our Democracy back,
It has never been a Democracy. It was always an Oligarchy. The rich white men (mostly slaveowners) who were running the country wanted to keep running the country, and wanted to get the Monarchy out of it. But they didn't want every plebe to have a voice, that would be madness!
It's our job to get vocal, get active, and get Democracy. Abolish the electoral college, as well as the practice of denying felons the vote. That only creates more incentive to find those who are politically inconvenient guilty of a felony.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1 person has more wealth than the bottom 50% because the bottom 50% have negative or zero wealth. I don't think you are giving an accurate picture.
I have more wealth than ~50% of the world just because I have a positive net worth. Once you start moving past people with NO worth you quickly surpass the "top 6" type metric.
Your stats are painting a misleading picture at best and maliciously crafted at worst.
The connotation is that something like the top 20 should be more wealthy than 99% but in reality the top 20 would still only be at 50%. The inconvenient reality for your narrative is that there are millions of millionaires. In fact the "top 1%" is 3+ million people in just the USA and 60+ million people worldwide. Sure there are "conspiracies" like Hillary trying to rig the election and primaries but the fact of the matter is that the wealthy are not "just 6 people". Its millions upon millions of people who do not even close to agree with one another.
Media has never been so consolidated or ______. Think about it.
Clickbait subject, but hear me out.
Q - How is the internet funded?
A - Advertising
Q - How are internet adverts sold?
A - Money is paid by the advertiser for every click
Q - How can websites get people to click on their adverts?
A - Target the articles and adverts at the correct demographics
Q - What demographic clicks on internet adverts?
A - Stupid people
So simply to compete, websites will promote FUD, warnings, threats. And the race to the bottom goes on with more shrill headlines and reports and more and more FAKE NEWS.
A possible fourth reason is that pre-2000, most tech reporting was intended for technically literate individuals. Ones who implicitly recognised dangers and didn't need them spelled out. But since "tech" has become mainstream, there are far more clueless idiots trying to do stupid things with technology. Maybe the negative articles simply reflect the (far) lower levels of competence among the audience for technology content?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Negative reviews are more fun to read than the positive ones.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Go shopping for a TV - see if you can easily find one that doesn't spy on you. Go shop for a mobile phone, I don't think you could find one that doesn't spy on you. Try to sign up for an online social group or communication tool, good luck finding one that doesn't stalk you across internet and sells your information to the highest bidder. Now tell me that ANY of this is driven by consumer demand.
was largely positive, but this changed from the mid-1990s to 2013,
The thing to understand is, this is not limited to tech. There has been an assault for a decade or two now on the public being happy in any way. You are meant to be riled up and agitated.... to what end I cannot say. But the end effect is not good, you can tell this is bleeding into everyone's real lives, affecting relationships and general behavior.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Au contraire, holo is from the Latin for "whole".
No it's not. NEWS AT 11!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I got a holo laugh from that.
Tech will not get us back to when America was great! MAGA!
A couple corollaries might be you get what you pay for and with a smart phone WYSIWYG. Free apps on tiny screens. What's not to like?
There is an overload with information - to stand out you have to attract consumer. What better way than by using headlines and copy that causes emotions. One of the most powerful ones are negative emotions like anger, fear. That is why we no longer have conversations on merit. Mention Trump or abortion and people's head explode. Now everything is at emotional level - we grow apart every single year!
Couldn't it just be that tech isn't as good as it once was? The arrogance of our industry is astonishing to me - "attention-seeking scholars" must be behind it, rather than our products being subpar. Remember when anyone could create content on their computer (iLife, mid-2000's)? Remember when you could layout a 3D product without having to attend a class on CAD programs (Sketchup's early versions, early 2000's)? Remember when you could skip past the anti-piracy warning (VHS, 1990's)? Remember when you could turn on a TV and be watching a show in less than 5 seconds (before digital television)? Remember when a computer crash didn't threaten your life the way a faulty accelerator does now? Remember when your cell phone battery lasted a week? Remember when your watch battery lasted 10 years? I'm not saying there haven't been some wonderful developments in the last 15 years, but there have been some massive steps backward as well.
People in the tech industry assume that going digital always improves things. Furthermore, media coverage for decades always focused on just the positive aspects of a change. Despite what this post says about negativity in media coverage, none of those very real steps backward I just listed has been covered much by a way-too-tech-friendly media. Compare the focus on Boeing in a plane crash versus the excuse making for Tesla in a car crash. Compare the praise smart phones get for making a phone battery last 24 hours versus the critique of Motorola flip-phones for having a battery that only lasted 3 days. Compare the coverage of laser pointers related to airplanes versus drones related to airplanes. In every one of these cases, the media has been orders of magnitude softer with our industry than they've been with others, and yet this article wants to downplay this as due to "attention-seeking scholars"?
We need to grow up in our industry. If we're going to make products that people actually count on in life-or-death situations, we need to actually deliver something that will work better, be bulletproof, and deserve the praise it gets.
As this election has shown us, there are significant negative effects of technological change (e.g. the effect on a labor-based, relatively unskilled workforce), so it does make sense that reporting would shift a bit (though admittedly, this aspect of the effects of tech haven't been truly appreciated until now it seems).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
It has never been a Democracy. It was always an Oligarchy. The rich white men (mostly slaveowners) who were running the country wanted to keep running the country, and wanted to get the Monarchy out of it. But they didn't want every plebe to have a voice, that would be madness!
You can trash the founding fathers of this country all you want, but they instituted a form of government that gave every plebe far more autonomy than ever existed in the past, even giving the plebes the ability to change it or abolish it if necessary.
It's our job to get vocal, get active, and get Democracy. Abolish the electoral college, as well as the practice of denying felons the vote. That only creates more incentive to find those who are politically inconvenient guilty of a felony.
Here's a thought experiment for you: Do you suppose Democracy would lead to more laws being passed or fewer laws? If the former, would that lead to more felons, or fewer?
I agree that former felons ought to have voting rights restored. But I really think they should ALL rights restored, including their 2nd amendment rights.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I remember that in the past, PC magazine articles etc were nearly always gushing with ridiculously unrealistic positivity about anything new or novel. If every new thing they wrote about actually changed the entire world even half as much as they all claimed it would, we'd all be living like the Jetsons by now.
I think its acutally a good thing that a little bit of skepticism has crept in since those days.
That said I'm still amazed by how many tech product reviews apparently feel the need to totally avoid documenting any significant faults with the product being reviewed, even if they are glaringly obvious from other sources. At best its very unprofessional, at worst they've clearly sold out and are not acting in the best interest of the reader.
I agree with the assessment. I also think the advent of social media and smart phones/tablets have added to negative views of technology. Most of us now have a small portable computer (which also makes phone calls) that we can pull out, at a stop light, and check Facebook, etc, etc. So there are real physical dangers in the current era of computing. I'm guessing nobody in the 1980's imagined anything like that while they were on their Commodore 64 and watching Computer Chronicles on PBS.
This newsgroup has been around for decades, reporting on the downsides of technology, so it's nothing new.
Nazi is short for National Socialist. It's amazing how you can spin socialism to be right wing by simply defining it to be so, ignoring all of the actual history.
You highlight a few groups and ignore that they went after essentially everyone who wasn't a Nazi. They had a paramilitary group from the outset that would physically attack people for speaking against them. If anything, that's most like the current regressive leftist groups like Antifa which wants to "bash the fash" (physically assault) anyone who speaks things they don't agree with. Incidentally, that same regressive left is happy to physically attack even gays or black people who don't fall in line. You know, just like the National Socialists of old did. I bet someday you'll try to spin them as a "right-wing" group, ignoring their history...
Between something 'negative', as in bias, and reporting facts that are not pleasant. Let's be honest: a lot if tech companies these days are engaged in ridiculous amounts of hyperbole, if not flat out lies about their endeavors and their potential, and engage in practices that are so unethical they make the head spin. Something millennials really need to absorb: just because the truth of a situation is uncomfortable does not mean you bury it. You can't change a situation by running away from it or trying to obliterate knowledge of it. Grow up.
You can trash the founding fathers of this country all you want, but they instituted a form of government that gave every plebe far more autonomy than ever existed in the past, even giving the plebes the ability to change it or abolish it if necessary.
No. The plebes were not allowed to vote under the Founders' system, only land-owners. And in order to be a land-owner you had to meet quite a few non-monetary requirements as well. They also set up an Electoral College due to logistical considerations (the fastest way to relay information was a courier on horseback) and also to insulate against the possibility of the masses voting in someone totally unqualified. Supposedly, the educated folk in the College would recognize, say, a proto-dictatorial populist strongman, more easily than the general electorate of landowners, and they would serve as a check over the election process. Part of the whole checks and balances thing.
The system wasn't perfect, and it still isn't. We need to keep what works and change what doesn't. Voting rights have been broadly expanded, because we recognized that is a good thing, and we set out to make it happen. Regarding the Electoral College - the logistical considerations are essentially gone in this information age. They have proven themselves ineffective as a sanity check on the election process by failing to take any action in 2016. Their votes have contradicted the will of the people in several recent elections. Add in an efficiency bonus for streamlining things, and I see zero reason to keep the Electoral College.
Just take a look at any of the places where we've historically gone for tech journalism. There's very little difference between a publication like Endgadget and the Huffington Post. My complaint is this: for the last two years, tech publications have completely lost their focus on tech in favor of divisive political content. The writers they're hiring are not tech writers. So when you have an article that would normally be a fairly good tech article, by the older standard, it falls on its face because the writer doesn't know what he's talking about, and the editors don't seem to care. {*caugh* Mashable} Even PC Magazine has fallen to political punditry, and nobody, absolutely nobody seems to care.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
was largely positive, but this changed from the mid-1990s to 2013,
The thing to understand is, this is not limited to tech. There has been an assault for a decade or two now on the public being happy in any way. You are meant to be riled up and agitated.... to what end I cannot say. But the end effect is not good, you can tell this is bleeding into everyone's real lives, affecting relationships and general behavior.
Sewing discontent has been a marketing strategy for far longer than the last two decades. Unhappy people are more reliable consumers.
Tech coverage was positive when tech was the new savior from the un-tech it was intended to replace. Now that tech is mostly replacing itself, the goal is to convince you that the thing you just bought needs an upgrade ASAP.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ProScan-PLDED3280A-32-720p-60Hz-D-LED-HDTV/46368139
No internet port
What Constitutional right to privacy are you talking about? I certainly don't remember seeing anything in there about that. Not that there shouldn't be -- we should pass a fucking amendment.
Only now that Steve Jobs is gone that the tech media now has the "courage" to criticize Apple and their products.
Who apparently lack the upper body strength to lift a sheet of paper, we'd have more positive things to say about them other than pointing out that their machines have sacrificed every performance characteristic for weight. And that their tower, while it may be the best Mac Mini ever made, is not a substitute for an actual tower.
Don't blame the messenger.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
You misspelled 'especially'.
Perhaps it is just that reporters are ageing? Remember that tech available when you were born is boring, new tech while you are under 30 is exciting, and new tech when you are older than 30 is scaring.
I mean come on, really? They're trying to draw a conclusion from a 27-year period and only sampled a pitiful 250 articles, or just nine articles per year -- and from only three publications at that? What we have here is an analysis of the methodology used to select the incredibly tiny pool of articles surveyed, not anything meaningful relating to the press' coverage of technology as a whole.
Maybe more negative reporting could be a move toward accurate reporting, correcting for Pollyanna boosterism in the past.
Also, tech with immediate and/or obvious risks is a reason not to pursue or develop it. That means that the tech that is adopted may have risks that take time to appear. Before Three Mile Island there were no major accidents or events, and reporting on nuclear energy could truthfully say there has never been a major accident in commercial nuclear energy. Since then there have been 3.
Current reporting on nuclear energy that acknowledges those accidents is factual and truthful. Does that make it negative?
> Now tell me that ANY of this is driven by consumer demand.
Yes, it is. Users don't care about privacy, or, for that matter, any hidden consequences (which is why usury thrives). Breaking the spell of rent seeking behavior now corroding our society is a difficult one. Starts with basic education of the technicalities, as well as financial literacy (many of lessons there extend beyond that of financial field).
Paranoia as such is only overreaction to false dillema, often with detrimental consequences. Not only needs one to ask "cui bono" and merely be paranoid and patently avoid it - that's only half of the thruth. They need to ask if the hidden trade is worth it - usury can be still useful if the borrowed capital can be reinvested in profitable venture.
To give an example, stonewalling facebook and whatsapp - the trade is seemingly "give up your privacy, or you'll get socially isolated". But it is a false dillema. Purchase a burner phone number online (~$1), set up the account via Tor, it's a fair trade.
One of my all time favorite Bloom County's: Offensensitivity. That was 35 years ago.
Doesn't Windows 10 ignore HOSTS, making your program obsolete?
I see zero reason to keep the Electoral College.
Because removing it turns the country into an empire ruled from the cities. The EC balances out different cultures. Without it absolutely no concerns of rural Americans would be addressed. As an American living in a rural area, this is not in my interest.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Prevention = best medicine (& what u can't touch can't hurt u) via NEW APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
Ads & malware rob speed/security/privacy
Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).
Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!
Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!
* Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!
APK
P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/
No Windows 10 doesn't "ignore hosts". That LIE has been spread SPECIFICALLY on /. by a jailbird loon named Khyber whom I corrected on it here https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10245269&cid=53896067/
* Windows Defender on 10 can be set to make a rule to allow hosts alterations on Win10!
APK
P.S.=> Besides, nobody is using Win10 (it's a spyware hunk of slower junk MS had to FORCE on users/give away) vs. Win7/8 as well... apk
60 million? More like 750+ million. You *did* say "1%" -- that's 1% of the world population.
In practice, we shouldn't care if the top 1% is accumulating $1m for every $1 we earn -- so long as our economic situation is getting better. But when we get a $1 raise in the face of $2 worth of rent/mortgage increases...
Divide and conquer.
Tech has become infested by sociopaths and managing nerds is now a second career for people who fail out of Wall Street. So, there are a lot of shitty tech companies and the ethics of the industry have collapsed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that tech reporting is becoming more negative when tech reality has also become a lot more negative
Programmers and users have learned this from our Experiences in the last 20 years, so yes, all the reporting tends to be negative:
- Any enterprise-based application will not be worth half what it costs and will not deliver on 75% of its promises.
- The more a software application costs, the less usable it tends to be and it has less value to people.
- Some have put spyware in operating systems and applications, and never completely disclose what is spied on.
- There has never been an actual need or use for a virus or malware checker. A high school kid can setup 2 or 3 things which work better and have zero cost.
- How about browers that all follow one spec. How about taking HTML5 out of 'reference implementation' stage and make it formal so the browsers can be made to work the same?
- The application IS NOT INTUITIVE, and there is no usable documentation. Your support of your software product sucks on all fronts.
- The internet is used as a means to insulate a company from having to deal with its customers. The only goal is not to spend time on customers or customer support.
- I watch 'coders' collect code snippets from all over the place and stitch them together to create something. The quality is very poor and these people are not actual programmers by any measure. Please get some developers that know how to write something other than franken-shit.
The truth is that in software and the related companies, There Is No Good News.
Windows 10 is a perfect example of something where there is No Good News, but the oligarchs push that shit like its air.
Because removing it turns the country into an empire ruled from the cities.
Except it does no such thing.
I hate to remind you, but Trump is also from a big city - the same big city with a certain street that Hillary was also very cozy with. People bought his message that HIS brand of ruling from the big city are done in the best interests of the rural parts of the country. Doesn't change that it is ruling from a big city.
The EC was never about balancing big cities with the countryside. Whether one side or the other has more influence depends on mostly each side's economy. Back in the Bad Old Days both city and country are not too far apart economically, so there wasn't a huge feeling that the cities are oppressing the country.
But industrialization happened, and the north overtook the south. The Civil War is really all the evidence you need that the EC doesn't balance rural and urban interests. You guys had to fight a war to settle a matter that other nations could do without.
As the power of cities grew, so did their influence on government. Queue the rise of Progressivism. Even conservatives trying to combat this are relying on rich folks (read: people who rely on big cities to make money) for funding if not be their representative
Economic reality doesn't care for your political leanings. Cities make money. Whether you're left or right, authoritarian or libertarian, money talks. Cities making more money and thus gaining more influence is as old as Gilgamesh.
What keeps rural relevant (without resorting to torches and pitchforks) is that while they're behind, the rural parts of America still make a non-trivial amount of money, even when most factory jobs aren't there anymore. Knowing how to use that rural money to represent yourself is how to keep the cities from taking over. Not by relying on a college of elites who may very well be big city boys.
The EC balances out different cultures.
No, EC is government picking which cultures are winners and losers.
Remember when the liberals had power and was pushing their culture on everybody else, it was all terrible and government was out of control? Don't think that it is any less terrible or out of control just because the gun just happens to be pointing in the other direction.
Without it absolutely no concerns of rural Americans would be addressed.
I don't see why that's the Federal government's job. Different states have different concerns between their rural and urban populations. State and local governments are there to address your concerns.
Even if it is about addressing the concerns of rural Americans, the EC still fails, since if your entire state went blue, then the rural Americans in that blue state are left unheard. Vice versa for urban Americans in red states.
If anything, the EC perpetuates neglecting about half of all Americans. Which I believe plays a big part in the bipartisanship and animosity that has developed. Both sides sees the other as unwilling to listen. Whoever loses this round feels neglected.