Hey everyone,
I’m 15, and I want to work in tech specifically in low-level systems development. Because I’m looking at spending my future inside the deepest layers of software infrastructure, I’ve been asking myself some heavy questions about where the tech world is actually heading.
First off, did anyone else see the recent news about AI labs using "destructive scanning" buying up physical books, slicing their bindings off with hydraulic cutters, and shredding them just to scan pre-2022 human text into training data? It feels like something straight out of Fahrenheit 451. Destroying physical human knowledge to feed proprietary algorithms feels so fundamentally broken.
Looking at how tech is structured, I keep noticing the contrast between proprietary megacorps and open software. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have multi-billion-dollar HQ campuses while Linux which runs 90%+ of the world's cloud, supercomputers, and Android is basically maintained by a non-profit foundation and a global network of engineers working from all over the world.
Since I want to build low-level tech myself, I'm so confused and have many questions in my head.
What is the root core of these problems? Is it just tech getting out of hand, or is it pure capitalism enclosing everything public (books, code, art, data) to build walled gardens?
Can open source actually save us? As someone learning low-level code, I love Linux, and open architecture (like RISC-V). But open source still runs on physical hardware that costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Big Tech still owns the foundries, the GPUs, and the energy grids. Can open source alone beat that hardware bottleneck?
If we needed a real counter-movement against hyper-corporate control, what should it look like? Is it building more open-source/open-hardware alternatives, pushing for public digital infrastructure (like data libraries and platform co-ops), or something else entirely?
Would love to hear from people who have been in systems programming, open source, or tech policy. Are we fighting a losing battle, or is there a genuine way to build a better tech ecosystem?