It's funny, Tron was one of the most memorable movies of my childhood. Later I watched Star Trek with the Holodeck, read Neuromancer and Snow Crash, dabbled with VRML, played with the SGI CAVE at university. I ought to be hugely excited by the progress in VR. But... I'm just not. Because Facebook and friends are not doing it because it's cool or because it will be useful to humanity, to them it's just another siphon to hoover up and monetise your personal data by steering you into purchasing and voting decisions that benefit them, not you. After literally decades of anticipation, I doubt I will bother to participate in VR.

All the time, I see ideas and technologies that have huge unrealized potential - they could be so much more - but they aren't, because they're being purposefully crippled by the companies who develop them, patent the shit out of them[0], and proceed to milk people for all they're worth using that tech. Everything is exploitative. And what about all that potential? Companies see it, alright - they wax about it in their marketing materials. Then they make sure it doesn't happen.

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[0] - While intended to protect from other alike competitors, this has a side effect of shutting off anyone who would like to develop technologies up to their potential.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my life, and the more I know about technology, the more apprehensive I am about working with it. However, I do also believe that those of us who feel this way have something of a responsibility to fight back a little, in whatever way we can.

Hopefully we can continue to keep a little space cleared of the FAANG's, and open for L/OSS. Or at least a neutral ground, where we can be reasonably sure that there isn't any nonsense going on.

Employee ownership in companies has to get better. Direction has become so opaque, hidden, and now quite frankly tasteless and borderline tacky.

At least this means they’re taking us closer to that Cyberpunk dystopia.