Published: March 25, 2025
[Git commit message for funsies: brain-native infrastructure as a service]
If you haven't figured it out by now, I absolutely love technology, but I am a healthy skeptic of “tech”. I would call it a brain-damaged version of technology, but that would be a disservice to people living with traumatic brain injuries, who deserve more dignity than “tech” evangelists. The term “evangelist” is also fitting, because it really seems like a religion to these people. I was raised Southern Baptist; I know a thing or two about religion.
Have you noticed that the world of tech seems to have its own absolutely ridiculous language? Sure, I guess these are words, but they have zero meaning to people who actually have to deal with the stuff. It's similar to the nominally-English language used by business executives. Thanks to my twisted sense of humor, I really like being in places I don't belong to watch the people who typically occupy these places squirm. The first (and probably last) time I was in a Centurion Lounge, I heard one of these executive leadership types having a very loud telephone conversation that stopped short of bragging about how miserable she was going to make some single mother of four who works for her that week. I don't want to hear someone who makes their business acumen their entire identity complain about virtue signaling ever again.
While the language of business leadership tends to revolve around euphemisms for demoralizing and dehumanizing their workforce, the language of tech focuses primarily on either solving problems that don't exist or overselling a product that was built to solve one specific problem the prospective customer may or may not have. In either case, the product being sold is then used to demoralize, dehumanize, or eliminate a workforce.
I'm not sure when this whole thing started, but I'm eager to blame the time period where everything was an “app”. I'm sure you remember that. Apple finally gave in and set up the App Store on what was then called iPhone OS and opened the floodgates for everyone with a modicum of programming skill (and $99, of course) to build their ideas and distribute them to a market of millions. Then the business types came and the term “software application” was promptly run through their Newspeak[1] translator to become “app”. From there, what I assume was Apple's attempt to democratize software development was completely seized by big business. “Do you want to do literally anything? Boy, do I have an App for you! That'll be $99. A month. Forever. Per device.”
These days, you find entire disciplines neatly packaged into one mangled-up word. The terms infosec (information security) and netsec (network security) come to mind. Neither aspect of cybersecurity at large can be a one-size-fits-all product, but the reductivist nature of these terms make it a lot easier to try to sell them as one.
A few years ago, you couldn't take a step in any direction without hearing “zero trust” if you worked anywhere near IT. If you don't know what that is, I wouldn't blame you, but since I'm not trying to sell it to you, you may be pleased to know it's a concept and not a product. Zero trust, when applied to network security, represents a security model where endpoints with different uses or purposes are separated into their own network segments and firewalled off from each other by default, as well as denying traffic outbound to the internet by default. That's it. Segment your network and block until allowed instead of the other way around. Any network engineer of average skill can do this with equipment on hand, unless that equipment has been hanging around since the dot-com bubble. But since this admittedly not-so-simple concept has been hidden behind a marketing buzzword, it's now a product that can be sold... and down the line, the vendor can just go “actually, on second thought, if you just yeet the humans doing this for you and give us a fraction of their salary, we'll do it for you! (and know everything there is to know about your internal technical operations so if we ever get hacked, so do you!)”
If it sounds like I'm teetering on the edge of waving a hammer and sickle flag, I promise that's not me. Society needs a healthy commercial sector, and people who put in the work to build a business deserve the fruits of their labor. I would just urge business leaders to remember humans work for them and not dollars. Now if you'll excuse me, someone with a THINKPOL[2] badge is at my door.
Newspeak, if you don't already know, is the fictional language used in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four canonically limited in grammar and vocabulary to prevent its speakers from thinking critically. I'm sure the similarity is a coincidence, but it doesn't look great to be honest. ↩︎
“Thinkpol” is the Newspeak word for “thought police”. ↩︎