Monday, April 14, 2025

Sociologist Janet Vertesi writes (in Will My Tech Enshittify? How to tell…) that “how a technology is monetized or funded, and by whom, dictates how it will develop. (…) A company must appease its Board, its stakeholders, its shareholders. (…) And these latter types demand growth: exponential growth. (…) the problem the technology has to solve is making money for its investors. And according to technosocioeconomics, that means it will grow and be shaped both by these relevant social groups, and their economic aims. So when you look at a new technology, don’t just look at its user interface, its cute color scheme, if it’s easy to use or not. Don’t just look at its privacy policy. You have to go even further behind the hood. You have to evaluate its underlying technosocioeconomics. (…) You want to check out: is this is a startup? if so, at what stage? is it a product made by a foundation? or an open source group? Each of these groups will shape the technology in different ways, which may be more or less to your liking.”

Vertesi classifies the “likelihood of enshittification” as “Very high” for startups and as “Very Low” for foundations and non-profits. She also speaks about other constellations.

Am I doing something wrong with Lino? Why does nobody care for making it sustainable?

First answer: Because there is no visible success? Hm. The success is actually very visible to me, but I find it difficult to show it to other people. What means “difficult”? It’s a matter of priorities. Writing documentation takes a lot of time and I have only 24 hours per day. When you look at our online demos, you will probably stop quite quickly because looking at yet another database application is boring for most people.

One obstacle for showing the results is that until now our customers are small companies and organizations who just want their own little database application. They are satisfied as soon as it works for them, they don’t care about the bigger picture. Maybe I have a mental handicap of getting lost in details. Something that would get diagnosed as ADHC or autism if I would consult a specialist. I admit that I can be nitpicky. But I believe that every software product needs nitpicky people as well. I don’t regret being as I am, and at my age it’s unlike that I will change substantially. Most people are busy with doing things most of their lifetime. Reasonable people focus on things they have been asked to do, creative people do even things nobody asks them to do, just because they feel that these things should be done. Lino is such a thing. Your destiny as a creative person is that you do seemingly useless things. You don’t care about getting recognized; sometimes it happens that you get a grateful feedback and then you are happy.

Second answer: A guy like me or like Vertesi would not invest their time into Lino because legally spoken, Lino is a startup. There is no warranty that you won’t get enshittified. The problem with this problem is that I can’t do very much to fix it unless I find at least one or two other people who believe in Lino as a software product, who understand the mission and the values behind Lino, and who would make it come out of the one-man store.

A visible result for Lino would mean some public website that would be used by many people. Maybe something with Continuous Cascaded Voting.