Chapter 4 — The rebellion against digital slavery

The author knows many intelligent and successful people, whose skills in their own fields he respects, who nevertheless give up in front of a computer, as if facing an invincible enemy.

In the author’s view, this attitude is the result of two decades of poor computing. In a first phase, the emerging need for digital tools was met in a way that kept users psychologically dependent on the holders of the new knowledge.

Things have since changed. Thanks to the Internet and free software, it is now possible to approach the computer in a new way.

The Internet and ethical informatics add something the personal computer of the past lacked: solidarity among users, which becomes shared knowledge.

Poor computing tried to create a sharp divide between programmer and user. The user was not expected to learn the notions needed when the machine malfunctions, just as a car driver does not need to become a mechanic. In the name of immediate operation, documentation was downplayed, and gaps were created that many people feel are impossible to fill.

Introductory guides and online guides were almost entirely removed, in the name of fighting piracy. Only buyers of the original product were entitled to a printed manual, and even that shrank over time. Examples and tutorials that could easily be shown on screen were withheld, while users could pay for courses on the same products. The logic of proprietary computing was: if someone is willing to pay for information, why give it away for free? The author’s metaphor, borrowed from a pioneer of ethical informatics, is that it is like being sold a car with its bonnet sealed shut.

4.1 The arrival of the Internet and free software

The Internet was born as a military network, but its adoption for scientific research shaped its evolution and success. In its early days it connected a few universities and research centres. HTML, the language in which web pages are still written, was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN in Geneva who needed to share information with other physicists.

Scientists used the network to exchange information and avoid wasting energy: two distant teams studying the same problem can benefit from each other’s findings and split a workload too large for either alone.

The same approach was later adopted outside science, leading to collaboration between programmers and users under the banner of free software.

Richard Stallman, a researcher at the MIT artificial intelligence laboratory, left his post to found a foundation that distributed software under a licence encouraging copying and distribution of source code, so that everyone could improve it. That licence is the GNU General Public License.

The proprietary-licence business model, which in practice forbade users to look inside programs, was challenged by people who understood that limiting this freedom kept users ignorant for economic reasons, and slowed the spread of knowledge and the evolution of computing.

The exchange of information among hackers (not to be confused with computer pirates) produced new programs and operating systems that are more stable, more secure and closer to user needs. Free software is developed continuously. Even when programs are released in incomplete form, users can follow their progress and send feedback, suggesting which features to implement first.

Internet and free software have grown together. Ethical informatics is today at least as solid as software built on economic interest alone. The effort needed to understand basic concepts is rewarded with the ability to master the subject to the depth each person chooses, rather than to the depth they are permitted to know.

The main freedom that free software brings is access to a large amount of good documentation, both source code and manuals, for studying what a computer can really do. Today anyone with a computer and an internet connection can, thanks to thousands of volunteers working mainly on free software projects, learn to use it well and decide which part of this new world to explore.

There was a time when free software was only for experts, and installing an operating system or ethical software required very specialised knowledge. Today it is hard to tell free software from proprietary software, and installation procedures are similar and well documented.

The author sets out to describe an orderly learning path for anyone who wants to discover or rediscover the computer.

Following these simple steps, and with a minimum of willpower, one can become part of a living community, and contribute, according to one’s inclinations, to the growth of knowledge in any field.