Web of Strife
"The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood"
- Douglas Adams
A single fan of a PC is hardly noticeable, a gentle and quiet hum breathing life into the inanimate. Walking through a data center, like I do for my day job, this delicate hum is multiplied by significant magnitudes going from a hum to a roar so loud it can cause hearing loss.
Luckily, we are given hearing protection and are tested regularly to ensure adequate measures are taken and, as a separate note, I can appreciate that our operations are focused on testing hardware configurations and speeds rather than providing resources for artificial intelligence, though that may be ignoring the bigger picture.
This is all to lead to a question I don't think we've had a chance to address: Why do any of this? The mentorship, the guidance, working closely with other organizations rather than competing, sharing resources, the free workshops and education etc.? Why? And why should anyone care?
Because the single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood, we simply provide direction. Its what separates an explosion from jet fuel that propels us to new destinations, but there are significant barriers that we exist to address.
We are constantly bombarded with systemic struggle and hardships to prevent a coordinated effort to improve our own material conditions in a meaningful way by way of socioeconomic insecurity and desperation.
The current system thrives on our feelings of inadequacy - you'll never look good enough, you'll never be rich enough, you're car isn't fast enough, and your clothes aren't high-end enough - as well as tangible insecurities relating to food, water, shelter, healthcare, communication, and education because there's profits to be made from those insecurities.
Building on this concept, technology has grown to become a tool to collect our data and guide our habits based on what is promoted, censored, and demonetized on social media where many spend their time. The source of who influences our content and where our data goes is an open secret which warrants a separate entry, but there is a clear necessity to reevaluate what information we consume, why we consume it, and how we go about that for the safety of our community and ourselves.
Like many other systems, there is a vast web of companies, organizations, and individuals who stand to profit from our struggles, but we have the means to understand that web for our own, improved, version to improve our standards of living by prioritizing human life and efficiency over profits. That may likely manifest as restructuring existing entities towards more humane, equitable, and sustainable practices or helping to create employee-owned companies to compete with industry giants. We aren't here to simply change industries, we hope to revolutionize the whole system together.
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