like yeah they haven't fulfilled their original purpose of allowing you to keep a CRT warmed up without burning in an image in about two decades but it annoyed me that we went from "computers are Contraptions that do Whimsical Things like dinging and playing back animated GIFs and making a whole lot of clatter to remember a few megabytes of information" to "everything with a CPU in it is a Device and it must look flat and abstract and be able to turn on and off instantly and anything fun it might do is a waste of power so by the way we pumped it full of ads and subscriptions"
i do not think this is specific to computers, but rather that it is a symptom of a broader cultural eradication of whimsy in all things
As a fae, I'm painfully aware of this in everything...
- Cameras? Used to be fun, now just black boxes that now take photos too perfectly 30 times a second
- Game consoles? Even the switch is basically a black rectangle with corporate approved coloured bars
- Cars? Black and White aggressive looking oversized monsters
- Clothing? Even the more exciting modern trends are just the same variants of beige and pastels (thankfully a lot of folks are doing their own thing here)
- Movies? Fun and whimsy isn't profitable, so we'll try something apathetic or self aware instead (I'm aware this is not the case with indies, but that's a caveat for all of this)
Things can't just be enjoyable because they are fun or silly. There is a constant push under current systems that everything should be practical and have a purpose. Even play for children must be "enriching".
This has to change
We must be able to watch in wonder at bubbles and pinwheels without justification, just because it's enjoyable. It is a required element of what gives us soul to experience whimsy and I will continue to fight and be mad that the powers that be (mega-corps) are trying to rob us of that
Give me pipes on my screens damn it!
