Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Andy Toone

@lockfarm.bsky.social

1.3K followers 690 following 3.4K posts

Petabytes in my day job, kilobytes in my spare time. Maker of Beasts - https://feersumbeasts.com/ 8-bit Z80 kit Technologist, cynical optimist, occasional CTO, regular tinkerer. Rural hideout in UK

feersumbeasts.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · Oct 18

You're meant to share the work you're doing..

I'm particularly bad at that, and somewhat overwhelmed with stuff..

..at which point I'm meant to end on a positive note and a call to action, but really, that's the post. That's it.

2 1 16

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 15h

Trump... that guy is hilarious. Incredible satire.

..wait, what?

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 16h

Except that right now without money your project will reach an audience of precisely zero. The handful of global corporates act as gatekeepers to that audience - whether it's physical products (Amazon), creative acts (Spotify, YouTube) or ideas (Google). Gaining traction within those systems costs.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 16h

The question is whether we've currently in a phase where small, independent, innovative businesses and creatives are being prevented from challenging the status quo?

Is the environment too harsh for genuine alternatives to arise?

That's not to say they won't, but they may take years to appear.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

Eric Schmidt recently told UK innovators that if they didn't hold out for $100 billion, they were failures. That's the mindset right now.

And my counter is that you can make a lot of good from building a thousand $100 million companies.

1 1

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

Note my follow up post. This isn't an argument against people earning good money from making stuff. Capitalism is just fine thank you.

The point is that excessive concentration and the loss of the "middle ground" is extremely harmful.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

The career path for far too many innovative and talented people is now to work for a big corporation on a tiny part of a project that does little more than increment their current product line up. Slightly 'better' search. Mildly faster phones. A quicker online checkout.

This is a tragic loss.

1 2

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

To be clear - the problem is not specifically that rich guys get rich (they'll die, the money will move on), but that we're not seeing investment in the stuff that could make the world a better place.

Creatives, inventors, engineers are struggling to find places where they can make a difference.

1 2

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

(which by the way may take years - it's incredible how long bad ideas can persist, even when they're publicly acknowledged to be bad ideas).

And it's not just AI - this is a problem that has left just a handful of companies with most of the power to decide what we create and build next.

1 1

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

We've got a feedback loop in tech at the moment where 'AI' (or something that can be dressed up to look like AI) is the hot thing for investors. So everyone makes 'AI' things. Which makes it look like AI is a hot thing to invest in...

...right up until the bubble goes pop.

1 1 2

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17h

One of the side effects of concentration of wealth and investment is that it become very much harder to get support for projects that might challenge the concentration of wealth and investment.

It's vitally important to have an environment where new ideas can emerge to challenge the 'big guys'.

3 7 13

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 21h

Let's have some music...

Rebba.bsky.social @rebba.bsky.social · 1d

❤️

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth 1967

YouTube video by PettyYou007

youtu.be

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 21h

If I could give you an extra like I would.

If there's a harbinger of death, then these two are the harbingers of parasitic corporate extortion.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 23h

The observation is that the ultra wealthy are more likely to be in a bubble just as an effect of their wealth. But yes, any community that isolates itself from 'the others' is prone to group think and irrational beliefs.

1 1