"Caveat emptor: what I learnt back in 2002 from an independent developer who never was independent"

The Latin phrase "caveat emptor" means "let the buyer beware". It places the onus of society's good functioning on the consumer and user; the citizen. It removes from the businesses and perhaps even our political class the moral and — critically — the legal obligation to deliver good in any of its senses.

When I was working as a volunteer HTML coder on #openofficeorg in 2002, one independent developer — who was anything but independent: he had firmly sold out to the worst instincts of the corporation #sunmicrosystems even as he supposedly represented the community we all formed a part of, including #sun ... so this developer used the term #caveatemptor in an email to one of the public email lists.

He was very #american: and there's nothing wrong in that except that — at least to my mind — there was something wrong: it was the #trump and "#businessunleashed as savagely as possible" version of #america. This strand of thought exists in many places: I could equally say it of the #uk in some respects these days.

Anyways.

NOTHING unleashed is positive — except perhaps in #wartime when losing is not an option: as with the wholly illegal invasion by #russia of sovereign #ukraine in our days. (In the case of #russia, we must shortly unleash everything we have: it's not a matter of negotiating peace at all; simply, one of consummating total victory.)

So if sometimes the forces of government become as toxic as those behind #trump, #putin, #farage, #musk, #altman, #peterthiel, #microsoft et al, there only remains one alternative: we have to engage in the same battlefield, but in reverse. We have to engage in sousveillance. We have to watch back.

When I was a kid, the "which?" magazine was immensely popular as a members-only, subscription publication. It helped us buy wisely and savvily in an age when business was stronger than representative democracy and the governance that should always emerge from this.

This age has returned: certainly in the #us, possibly not yet in the #eu; and with some of our own #uk leaders still going down on bended knee to shiny logos from abroad.

I sensed a while back that instincts such as "which?" went into abeyance when the #uk government — and then again, the #eu in particular — passed a slew of measures to protect the citizens at source: before the act, that is. Before companies had a chance to do evil.

Now with people like #trump unrolling all that — for now in the #us (even as the fierce and unacceptable extra-democratic relationships that cross the #atlantic and implant and embed global mindsets disagreeable to our communities also CHANGE our societies for the worse rather than TRANSFORM them for the better) — perhaps, now, we need once again consumer-, user- and sovereign citizen-focussed process and delivery for almost everything. Not dependent on government necessarily, though where still the latter remains collaborative with ordinary people's interests this will continue to be desirable.

But no. Something else: a set of #surveillance tools and architectures designed so that citizens can look firmly back: not necessarily at government where this stays as benign as the modern world yet permits. More at that intolerably noxious nexus between a selfish, self-interested and egotistical #siliconvalley #bigtech and politicians who should've chosen to serve the people but just serve their own pockets.

Just this ...