I'm a tech person. My people used to be self-indulgent when we came in power. Think of a very bureaucratic and unkind person in a government office with little recourse elsewhere or around him. That's how we became in the "Age of Gates". I appreciate the "Age of Jobs" where now I'd think: how can I make this more intuitive, fuss-free, and a unified experience; instead of: I did this work, the least you could do is figure out how to use it... if you are smart enough.
But that's my adaptation of the what was given to us in this new age. Otherwise, I'll let my brethren speak for me. To be honest, some of them would not consider me "tech" enough. But I consider them distant family all the same. Together, I feel wary when we are unseated in favor of the masses. When what we do is replaced by an unchangeable, corporate, one-size-fits-all design that caters to the most basic and common standards of vain; straight from the book of fashion and apparel. It is very usurping especially when it is justified with our own core mantra: it gets the job done. And it does not help when my non-tech-savvy friends come to me for help despite the "superior design".
I guess even the "lords of automation" can fear automation just like all other professions. Who would have thought... Anyway, this is what I sent a friend one day: Why you are banned from Apple Devices.
Because when they fail, both you and I feel helpless. With non-Apple products, only you may feel helpless when they fail but I can help you. Because I'm not "disallowed" by the "grand design".
Article abridged:
Although you won’t find any Apple users who will admit it, Macs do occasionally crash and fail, sometimes in spectacular ways. [...] If your Mac [...] hard drive has failed [...] Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers [...].But with a little bit of catering to the masses attitude from within the tech culture itself as a core value, not from outside it, we all can be better. And we won't have to worry about another "evil empire" eating our children and such fears that can easily be misunderstood as: you're just jealous... simplistic thinking.
Apple is making itself the net admin and switching from a local protocol to a remote one, that’s all. [...] This shouldering by Apple of bandwidth and administrative duties for non-power users is certainly indicative of their upcoming iCloud and iTunes strategies.
They’ve got motive and opportunity [...] to shift pretty much all your content server-side, including [...] the OS itself. [...] They’re taking responsibility away from the user [...] Obscuring the inside of the machine has been a priority for Apple for a decade. This is just another [...] portion of their moving everything but the very facade of their devices away from the grasp of the user, for good or ill.
Anyway, I've been wanting to admit this for a while. I dislike some parts, but I appreciate way more. And I don't think I'll be automated out of existence. My value is unpredicted on things outside me.
Of course, only later I discovered that I acted and lived from a world where my value was contingent on many factors outside myself, and most of all the very difficult task of "making it work" for someone else. Otherwise, I'm useless, I felt... and that's the worst fate anyone can get. So, I admitted that to my friend and told him: if it'll make you happy 80% of the time when it is working but make both you and I unhappy the remaining 20%, I'll take that in favor of any combination of fractions that amount to the reverse. I want your everyday well-being to be maximized. Because he really gets upset, almost road-rage like, when his computer fails. And I thought that was my problem automatically and only re-enforced my feelings of being useless which I was re-reinforcing by coming at it from a place of rebellion against a company that simply figured out a product that I used to perform and many people needed help with.