With all the distopian novels, movies and cautionary tales that have been circulating in the last century I thought that it should have been clear that “le magnifiche sorti e progressive” (see La ginestra by Giacomo Leopardi) approach of some technofilies should have been taken with a grain of salt. I was wrong. I am not against progress but I see that as time goes by people’s freedom is constantly eroded by a steady flux of technologies that are progressively harder to muster and control.

The exact opposite of the freedoms that the General Public License tries to protect in software. People are less and less in charge of their life. Perhaps it was an illusion even when we had fare less tech in our life, as the hunchback of Recanati foresaw