Desktop computing is being killed off. So is self-hosting.

LLMs being used to wow greedy yuppie capitalists into buying in so they can replace all workers and get huge returns next quarter for eliminating the companies most expensive cost center: people. “The buildout must be intense! We can’t get beaten by the Chinese!! Quick, order the entire output of the world’s computer components”

Now suddenly you can’t buy them. Do you think that’s an accident? Do you think they just naively did that? These guys who built these startups and these tools? These guys who figured out how to extract billions of dollars in personal wealth from the US economy - you think they didn’t know they were taking computers away from us?

Desktop computing is fucking dead my friend, unless they fail. But it’s looking less and less like anyone will or even can stop them.

I hear you, but I’ve started to wonder about what things are wrong intrinsically in digital tech, or at least that are hard to fight.

With a desktop computer that’s supposed to help you with everyday things, you’ve got to have an OS and software. I think that naturally leads to vendor lock in, but not just for replacement parts as it would be with a car but your personal information and artefacts.

I suspect it’s in the nature of building up a software stack that’s user friendly enough for mass consumption: there are just too many choices the developers need to make, and too many layers, and so too many opportunities a company has to make their software incompatible with someone else’s.

I suspect with desktop computing every day mental work was colonised by monopolies and monopolistic structures. Which then sent us down a problematic path which may very well strongly resemble cyber punk dystopias.

That big social media and then this AI surrender followed, is to me, not a coincidence at all.

There’s something funny about software that betrays its promise, a dangerous magic if you will.