Humanity is losing in a battle of swipes

This scene, as short as it was had a lasting impact on my mind and changed my impression about programmers and programming. It portrayed programmers as highly skilled robin-hood type, badass mutants (which we are), who think on their feet under immense pressure. 

The movie ends with the programmer getting custody of his daughter and starting a new life away from a life of violence and greed.

As much as this was a work of fiction, ethical hackers and software programmers were highly regarded in the 90’s and 2000’s. This was because majority of programmers back in the day had an open-source mindset. Their goal was to use technology to serve humanity by providing their source-code free or at highly subsidised rates. By doing this, other developers were able to build better versions of it, thereby improving the progress of society as a whole. 

Fast-Forward to 2025,  I doom-scroll to an image of Sam-Altman who was in the news for breaching his contract with Elon Musk concerning his AI product OpenAi. Musk had sued Altman for positioning OpenAi as a non-profit organization during pre-seed funding and turning around and making profits from it afterwards. OpenAi currently has a valuation of $300bn dollars as at the time of writing this article. 

To begin with, having to be sued by Elon Musk for failing to commit to open-source is the biggest shame a programmer should experience. But since we live in an era where not being accountable has become a virtue worn with pride by most notable figures in the political and economic space, it would not be socially acceptable to tow the honorable path. How did we get here? and why are we serving the product and not the other way around?

A history of distraction

Sometime in 2007 I had to shut down my social media account to allow me focus on developing my skills as a programmer. I had difficulty with attention spans because of constant pokes and messages. What is interesting is that as of 2007, the most popular social media platform had only 50 million users compared to over 3.065 billion monthly active users as of 2023. The question i ask myself everyday is that if my distraction threshold was exceeded when it was still at 50 million subscribers, what form of distraction threshold is my mind working with now?.

Bear in mind that in 2007, the only social media platforms that existed were Facebook, mySpace, twitter, and youtube. MySpace was the most popular platform back in 2007 with 114milion subscribers. It died when it was aqcuired by a company that focused more on revenue than user experience. Could facebook and other platforms be tunneling down the same path?

Call a spade a spade

I believe online interaction apps have nothing to do with being social anymore, in fact I think they have proven to make people become anti-social. A product that once made going online fun has spiraled into one that has made us all emotionally unavailable. Platforms now spew toxicity on the whim and even reward users that promote obscenity. Gone are the days when a little boob-flash would lead to an instant ban on certain platforms, now the algorithm favours lewdness because it is more liked as a viewing preference. Teens are exhibiting anti-social behavior on a global scale as these platforms fail to enforce age-resctrictions.

A movie was produced recently featuring a storyline about a young person that was mentally disturbed to the point of killing a fellow student. A lot of conversation went on about it and fingers were pointed concerning the movie and how real life events mirrored the plot. Here is my two-cents on it: I think society is to blame in blinding the young ones into what is morally acceptable and what is not. There is a price to pay when we as a society loses what makes us human in exchange for monetary gains. When we turn a blind eye to crimes committed by large tech-corporations and leaders of industry. When we praise racists and acts of racism cloaked as reform. When we encourage them to scroll instead of reading a book or building a dollhouse.

For most of these young adults, the online community is their only solace in a society governed by adults who doom scroll and fail to give them quality attention. Bus and train rides are dominated by people staring endlessly at their screens. God forbid you mistakenly be the exception and “bareback” a journey. You could be labeled a creep.

The Solution

1. Convert tech products that exceed a certain subcriber base into government owned products: The truth is that umlimited power is often abused. Most tech-products have been given the power to play god. I read of a lawsuit involving a tech giant that was spying on its subscribers by intemittently taking photos and and recording audio in the aim of using it for marketing purposes. This is a classic case of privacy invasion at its peak. 
2. Make digital products customer-centric again: I’m not calling out any names but most ai creation platforms have very shoddy user-centric considerations. Their business model is so toxic and exploitative and gives you little or no value for money. A consumer protection body needs to be put in place to set standards for these products, so that a generation of users will not grow up seeing exploitation as normal.
3. Guard digital borders religiously: I feel there are digital boundaries that should not be crossed when using a digital product and the fact that most digital poducts cross these boundaries in every scroll with little or no regard for the consequences of their actions is worrisome. Before the advent of android and ios devices, information safeguarding was easy to implement. I mean you cannot force me to read a book i do not want to read or watch false, provocative, obscene or distressing content against my will. My culture, and individual identity was never under any threat of invasion by oilskin tradesmen because i consciously had the choice of tuning in to content that aligns with my personality. Today, platforms will demean you with content of all sorts and will leave you questioning your identity. The concept of right and wrong has been diluted so often that even as an adult, it is very difficult to form original opinions on certain topics. We need to get our identity back…not by clamping down on immigration, but by clamping down on digital borders.
4. Proper app classifications: When I was younger, I read books a lot. I could tell the content of a book by its cover (no pun intended, lol).  The only author that had really deceptive covers was James Hardley Chase. There were some hardley chase titles I could’nt even read in public because of its lewd cover reputation, but mind you his books were almost never sexually explicit (save for a few hints here and there). My point is, back in those days, labels were easier to read because what you see is what you get. Digital products seem to work against such semantics. A product originally designed to connect you with friends can suddenly starts showing you seductive images and videos. Or a picture app meant for viewing family photos can start showing you videos of women in seductive outfits dancing provocatively. Again, the toxic app will blame you “the user”, and argue that it picked up the pattern from your history. The long term mental damages of staring at indecent images and videos cannot be over-emphaisized. It breeds incels and sexually depraved perverts, especially in societies where socializing is difficult.
5. Properly Taxing “over-rich” founders: I personally feel there are too many billionaires in the world for the world to still have issues like inflation, food scarcity e.t.c. Someone somewhere is helping people evade tax or is embezzling public funds. Agreed these people worked for their money, they started a trade and exceled at it; but at whose expense? The resultant chaos and inbalance in wealth distritution affecting the world today stems from a place of blatant greed and an egoistic need for manipulation and control. I feel society should protect its citizens from these individuals by the way of tax.

In conclusion, I would really love to create a time capsule and go back to early 2000’s when being a programmer was a honorable career and when I was confident enough to name a service that truly cared for me after all.