Immensely stupid fragility, January 2021

(Paywall-free popularization like this is what I do for a living. To support me, see the end of this post)

It’s always embarrassing. It really is.

Immensely stupid fragility, January 2021 /img/out-demons-of-stupidity.jpg

Six weeks ago, I shortly ranted about the immensely stupid fragility of our “high-tech” way of living. This morning, I got a confirmation that that post should really be the first of a regular series, by just looking at one home page.

I am not making this up

These are real titles from CNN’s home page, right now (January 27th, 2021, 6:20am GMT+1):

Immensely stupid fragility, January 2021 /img/cnn-question-and-answer.jpg
Those times when one title is the explanation of another...

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How long does it take to suspect that the answer to the fourth bullet is in the previous three?

Please note that I am not advocating socialism, communism or any other “ism” here. How to solve the problem is a whole other issue. But there cannot be any solution without first seeing the problem, and the problem is: the immensely stupid fragility of a system like this.

Is it right that there are people, not States, so rich to bicker over space during a pandemic that will take almost all the others a decade to recover? You decide.

I am only saying that something like this is too fragile to keep going. Too stupidly fragile. And no solution can come without acknowledging this fact, as soon as possible.

Now, if you are asking yourself “why publish this here? How on Earth is this connected to the purpose of THIS website?”

The answer is easy, and is the same given in the first post of the series, here repeated for your convenience:

All the immensely stupid fragility above (and MUCH more) is all enabled, or at least greatly intensified, by really, really stupid (ab)uses, or at least huge misunderstandings, of both digital technologies and what innovation is

Bill Watterson! is right: " the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

If you agree that our hyper-(mis)digitized way of living is a galactic embarrassment, see the yellow box below to help me keep fighting it.

Who writes this, why, and how to help

I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.

To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.

The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!