Thinking about freedom and computers
There is a fine line to walk between protecting people from bad things and letting people have total and complete freedom. Of course there are also many different ways to define the very concept of freedom when it comes to the world of computing in particular. Given absolute freedom in any computer system, a lot of people would undoubtedly end up damaging the system itself, simply because they don’t have a certain degree of knowledge in the field.
I would like to point out that I do indeed believe in many kinds of freedom and that people should have it, but our realty is not one of absolutes. A binary world it is not. There are so many levels of what is “reasonable freedom” while letting people do useful things instead of having to constantly butt heads with the device they are trying to do it on.
Freedom as defined by some would be that you have such absolute control over every single aspect of the device that you can literally do anything to the device. This includes load any software you want onto it and run it, modify any aspect of it that you see fit to change and also preferably that whoever made the device lets you access the source code for the software and that the specifications and blueprints for the hardware is readily available. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this notion, just in the way that a lot of people assume that everyone wants to actually do these things or even care about them.
If we are to face a fact of life, a whole lot of the population of the world doesn’t care in the least about the low-level intricacies of any given computational device, nor would they know what to do with source code for any given application if they were presented with it. They are people who just want to use the tool in question to accomplish something in their lives. Be it surf the web, send e-mail, edit a video they shoot earlier that day or whatever other activity an average person might want to do with a computer. Wouldn’t we be limiting their freedom by forcing our views of how everything needs to be open upon them? Since they have to learn how every part of the system is interconnected and programming in some form before they are able to take advantage of these available freedoms, they are no more free than a person using any given non-free or non-open software or system. Limited in different ways, sure, but limited none the less.
Effectively forcing someone to learn a bunch of things, put down a lot of time into it before they can make use of this built-in freedom, isn’t particularly free at all. More of an elitist way of making people adhere to how you view the world instead of catering to their needs in a easy to use system. One does not exclude the other. There is no need for only one to exist and not a combination of the two. Why couldn’t there be truly free and easy to use software, a best of both in the same package?
I love how some initiatives and organizations are working to give users the best possible experience while enabling the best middle ground of both worlds. Freedom to do anything, while letting those who do not have the necessary knowledge take advantage of the power that exists in the device. Android in its “pure” form is a fairly good example of this, although it is often lacking in the department for ease of use, more often than not it gets things fairly right. Ubuntu is another project that has at least to some degree married the concept of easy to use for most people with the freedom of doing whatever you want with the system. The thing is, they are continuously improving and advancing with each iteration. But a lot of people would probably not label these two projects as truly free, because they “enforce” a certain way of doing things and the projects are controlled from a central organization. Funny how freedom can be so many things, to so many different people, isn’t it?
Assuming that everybody wants the same thing or that everybody has an interest in learning the deep details of computing is a false assumption as big as it can be. Most people just want to use and are quite pleased with that. A lot of people must grind their teeth at all the companies who are successful in the common marketplace without being a strong advocate for their particular brand of “freedom”. Freedom can also mean that a product enables the user to just frikkin’ do things without having to get a degree in computer science.
I’m not saying we should take away all the “sharp objects”, but forcing them upon people who don’t want or need them doesn’t strike me as a particularly good way to encourage freedom. Build the basics for the user who only wants to use things and let those who label themselves as power-users, techies, nerds, or professionals access the deeper level stuff. It’s not really too hard a concept to grasp, although it does seem like it’s beyond a great many people, sadly.
I would just like everybody to stop using freedom as their personal bat with which to swing at anyone who likes to do things in a different way.
