I think it's getting harder to "be your own person" digitally.
For example, host your own mail.
Do people host their own webservers anymore? (is a VPS is good enough?)
IRC? muds?
The rise of smartphones made "computing" accessible to everyone, but people can't actually compute.
Computers used to come with a language. You could write your own programs and run them from the getgo. You didn't have to ask permission to digitally sign your own program and run it.
Ugh, yeah, good luck on this one. You can get by quite well using one of the major providers as an (outbound-only, if desired) gateway though.
> Do people host their own webservers anymore? (is a VPS is good enough?)
Yes and yes but mostly it's Docker hell
> IRC? muds?
They're both still around, albeit a shadow of their former selves. IRC is better than ever, use a client like The Lounge and it's basically(*) a modern chat app.
(* Okay, stuff like multi-line and message editing are still effectively missing, but you get embeds and whatnot)
For example, host your own mail.
Do people host their own webservers anymore? (is a VPS is good enough?)
IRC? muds?
The rise of smartphones made "computing" accessible to everyone, but people can't actually compute.
Computers used to come with a language. You could write your own programs and run them from the getgo. You didn't have to ask permission to digitally sign your own program and run it.