Largely, I believe, when phones crossed over from being basic communication devices to being smartphones, but retained their 'appliance' nature.

An entire generation thereby grew up with personal computing represented by vendor-controlled handheld appliances, and naturally regarded actual PCs in the same manner.

And their skills to manage a PC atrophied too, leading to a feedback loop.

I always thought the quote "you're not the customer you're the product" originated with RMS, I went to look it up before I commented and it turns out it was Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman in 1973! Just as true now as then. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/

> When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user, and instead start operating on behalf of the OS vendor and app developers?

2008-2012

* Apple launches AppStore, immediately starts printing money

* Google launches Chrome, taking web in stranglehold and making it app delivery platform

* Microsoft releases Windows 8, quoting Wikipedia: "changes include increased integration with cloud services and other online platforms (such as social networks and Microsoft's own OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and Xbox Live services), the Windows Store service for software distribution, and a new variant known as Windows RT"

* Android starts shift from AOSP to Google Play Services

* Adobe replaced their perpetually licensed Creative Suite with subscription based Creative Cloud

* Spotify and Netflix brought streaming to mainstream

* Chromebooks launch

I think these paint pretty clear picture of the shift we had in computing 15-20 years ago which set the path for reduced user control/ownership of their devices/software/media.

I do think that was very interesting era, and in some ways a peak which almost by definition implies that some downfall followed.

> When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user

When we connected them to the internet.

The charitable take is that computing has grown to expand more and more use cases, and to deliver good experiences for those use cases requires simplifying assumptions, and that's where the inherent complexity of life leaks in.

for me it was around the time of windows 8, that I felt my computer had a lot of things to do that weren't the application I actually wanted to use. Before that I would just occasionally feel that the system could be a little kludgy.

Richard Stallman told y'all when it happened that it was happening

Every bad day for Apple-Microsoft is another great day for switching to Linux.

You have choices. Make them.

Well, people use less and less open source, and more and more vendor provided enshittified apps, which of course don't act in YOUR best interest.

Campaign for privacy laws, open standards, right to repair, interoperability requirements etc.

People want the features that these things drive. PCs stopped being a purely "user says X, do X" thing at approximately the moment they became powerful enough to run things in the background. The idea that the computer would be helpful and do things for you beyond what you explicitly asked for is pretty attractive. People don't like being spied on, but good news, this one is all local. This isn't like Facebook building a social graph for you so they can sell the data to advertisers.

As soon as they were connected to a network and capable of participating in the business OODA loop against their competitors in real time.

Add me to the list. This feels like a “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” item.

I suspect a lot of the fascination is because the information can be used to improve our quality of life. I suspect the cynicism comes from those who have the most access to this information using it to improve their quality of life at our expense. (That, and actually making use of the information takes more effort than most people are willing to expend.)

I have always been leery of data collection, but I have my own parallel: there was a lot of optimism about the benefits of personal computers in the 1980's and 1990's. Of course, that was pushed by the industry itself. I have since realized that what was happening then was not all that different from what is happening today. The outcomes were different because the tools were different, but it basically reduced/reduces to a bunch of people trying to enrich themselves by promising one thing and delivering another.

I wouldn’t call black mirror an “exploration” of thought. It’s rather myopic.

It’s like going to the 1962 world fair but, instead of optimism, everyone just wants to tell you why everything in the future sucks.

There’s a very big difference between opting in to using a tool and having the tool silently start analysing you in the background.

Missed opportunity to call yourself the Foxtographer :)

I'm really trying to understand what as-a-fox means.

[dead]

I don't think this is the same situation at all. Zoom recordings are outside your control and you know your boss or HR will have access to them. And relationships with employers are often closer to enemy than friend.

Your friend's Mac creating a knowledge graph is totally different because they control it. It gives them power to remember more about their interactions with you, but they would have to actively abuse it to hurt you in any way. If you can't trust someone with information then don't give it to them in the first place expecting them to forget it.

The problem is what happens if you get hacked or Apple decides to sell you out/work with law enforcement. I would only trust code like that if it was fully transparent about what it's doing, open source and strictly opt in. Apple is doing it in the background and that makes it instantly suspicious.

Exactly. It’s a chilling effect on an ever-increasing proportion of human interaction. If everything you say is on permanent record then the safest course of action is to say little, and keep it as bland as possible.

> I’d rather a friend forgets my birthday and apologises

Do most people really remember all the birthdays they acknowledge? For me they must be diarised, or beyond immediate family there's no chance.

I used to think it was artificial and pointless to wish people happy birthday after being reminded by google calendar. I now know enough adults who have taken (mostly minor) offence to being forgotten, that I play the game.

I swear I know the difference and when to use their, there, they're, but based on my iPhone messages, you'd think I was an illiterate buffoon. There are plenty of examples where I could show where they're making me look dumb with their edits.

I turned autocomplete off for this reason

phew, I knew not spending a lot of effort in skool for learning proper grammar would be worth it as an adult

The interesting aspect for me is that what we perceive as "claudism" here is exactly how TV reporters have always talked - and to a point, how marketers / pitchers talk. How did it end up having this disproportionate weight in AI engines ?

LLM writing makes me puke