Close by where I live is a monument for civilians who were taken from their houses and shot by the German occupiers during the last months of WWII. Simply because they were suspected of having distributed pamphlets. There wasn't even evidence to that claim, and retribution was a thing.
I passed that monument countless of times during my youth, giving me pause to contemplate.
It's a tangible reminder of what ultimately happens when people stay silent about something as final and poignant as one group denying the existence of another group for whatever reasons.
I have no problem with expressing differences over world views. I take issue when that world view entails denying the other side's existence because of differences, and a fervent intent to act on that notion.
For what it's worth, pubnix - public accessible UNIX systems - were/are that to an extent. You'd get a free account on some shared system, you log in via a terminal, and you get access to all those things: gopher/gemini/web hosting, chat, bulletin boards,...
But shell access doesn't appeal to non-tech users. It's the difference between engineering the electricity in your own house to become self-sufficient, and just expecting to magically get power when you plug a device in the socket.
This an interesting question. Forgive my meandering take on this.
We already have a mix of technologies to achieve that effect. Sort of. Simplified, you can host a personal website on shared hosting, a VPS, or wherever, at the same time chat via IRC or XMPP, and use RSS to create feeds to share tidbits about yourself. Nothing stops you from combining different programs and services to get that.
So, what are the problems you're actually trying to solve here?
Do you want to improve accessibility, that is: lower the bar for non-technical people to join feeds, publish their own thoughts, join group chats,...?
Do you want to improve discoverability across what we already have? Make it easier for everyone to serendipitous finding information? Like, search, recommendations, linking, pub/sub, and so on?
Do you want to solve sustainability? Developing models that also cover the expenses involved i.e. either covering the costs in maintaining tech, or redistributing the costs?
Do you want to solve governance, the issue of providing enough affordances to communities to moderate/govern themselves?
These are big questions, and once you try to solve them together, you'll have to make trade-offs, inevitably. Decentralizing everything sounds great, but that has an impact on discoverability, as well as accessibility. Not having another account sounds great, but that hides complex debates about online and offline, distributed identities.
Even more so, if you dig deeper, our approach these affordances is based on our values. And those can be very different depending on who you talk to. That's where things enter the murky, ambiguous teritory of sociology, culture, and so on where few absolute truths are offered.
That doesn't mean we should just accept throw up hands and accept the status quo, though. Talking in terms of a single "network" or a single "protocol" is too crude to approach these questions. The intrinsic value the Internet offers us, can be found in a handful foundational design principles like standardization, composition, openness,... which allow us to create many networks that host many diverse communities. Each to their own isn't a bad thing as it's too naive to think that there's a catch-all solution that caters to everyone's needs. Balkanization, such as it is, becomes really problematic if it erodes common beliefs we hold about a free, open and accessible digital global network.
Many "technical" people who are active in these niches like Mastodon, Nostr, the Fediverse, or even the Smolweb, do so because they are steeped in a particular (counter)culture that espouses the same values that also led to the birth of the early Internet. Cyberspace really is a marketplace of ideas first. Technologies are an expression of that.
> I think, especially in cities, you just have the problem of bicycles not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes. They are too slow for the street and waaaaay to fast for the pedestrian side
Replace that bicycles with cars and the argument still holds up. "historically" here is really an argumentum ad antiquitatem. Both cars and bicycles are fairly modern inventions which both appeared around the same time.
In fact, city streets were mostly dominated by pedestrians, horses and carriages up to the late 19th / early 20th century. Moreover, there was a backlash against early cars as well. The more interesting question is this: how did cars really ended up overtaking streets in cities and towns? Why did infrastructure / urban planning ended up favoring car use in the public space?
> I have seen some very ambitious plans to make city Centers free of anything that can go faster than 25kph and I root for such plans but they are all very naive usually
Why are they naive? I live in a historic city center. Streets used to be cramped with cars, it smelled horribly with exhaust gasses, soot covered historic buildings, parking space is extremely limited and small sidewalks were crowded forcing you to teeter into traffic.
Over the past decades, that all changed as car use was gradually disincentivized and in some areas downright banned. All I can say is that it has been a massive improvement. The city is far more appealing then it used to be... and these days I know few people contesting that it's "unfeasible" or "unpractical".
Would it work everywhere? No, not really. Let's be realistic. But let's not venture into the other extreme dismissing wholesale as a naive idea either.
The article raises some good points, but I also have some strong reservations.
Take the examples, for instance. The author puts a lot of stock in what Nabokov and Da Vinci did themselves in their youth and calls this 'agency'. But at the same time, conveniently or inadvertently, the author doesn't expand and look at the broader picture in which those individuals lived and how that determined their lives.
Nabokov was born to a very wealthy and prominent Russian family with ties to Russian high nobility. He had access to a breadth of networks, resources and means to develop into the person he became. Without disparaging the his talent as a writer, it's equally important to acknowledge that his early life wasn't burdened by poverty, bad health, illness, instability and so on. Nabokov himself even described his childhood as "perfect" and "cosmopolitan".
Da Vinci, on the other hand, was born out of wedlock outside Florence to a lower class family. The historical record regarding his life before his arrival Florence is fragmentary at best. What can be deduced is that his early childhood must have been tenuous and turbulent, living in different homes with different family members (grandparents, uncles, mother). His own parents went on to live separate lives as well. We do know that he only received very basic education - reading and writing vernacular - as a child.
Da Vinci's life was determined by a stroke of chance. At age 14, his family moved to Florence and he was lucky enough to end up a studio boy at Verrocchio. He became an apprentice at 17 and received 7 more years of training. Even so, at the same time, it's clear that his family wasn't wealthy and so he might as well have ended up in a very different place at the time e.g. working as a clerk for a budding bank, notary, or even an industry like a tannery.
It should be clear that 'agency' only counts for so much. Neither Nabokov or Da Vinci are exceptional as millions of others also engage in poetry or drawing in early childhood. External circumstances such as birth and chance are just as determining. From a historical perspective, the author can be perceived as falling into the traps of hindsight bias and survivorship bias in that regard.
Even so, the article does make a valid criticsm regarding education systems. Transferring knowledge through rote exercising and standardized testing serves a purpose. The upshot is that it allows for scaling basic education towards millions, which is no small feat to accomplish. The downside is that doing so ignores the needs, traits, ambitions, strengths and weaknesses of individuals.
Modern educations systems were first formed during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, and further grew during the 20th century when humanity experience profound growth, economical and technological advancements. It should be noted that there never was a unified vision on education, and the argument in the article isn't new by any means.
During the early 20th century, incumbent education was heavily criticized by emancipatory movements. Helen Parkhurst, Maria Montessori, and John Dewey were influential educational thinkers who addressed some of the issues touched upon by the author as they laid the groundworks for an educational framework called the Dalton Plan.
At the same time, Célestin Freinet is another influential educational thinker who created the Freinet system, addressing the same criticisms, which is widely adopted throughout the world:
Finally, the article betrays a fallacy hidden in it's subtitle: The world is a very malleable place. To an extent, the world is malleable. But one only controls one's actions, less so the outcomes. Human life is complex, unpredictable and capricious. The impact of some decisions can sometimes only be gauged several decades into the future.
While we consider Da Vinci a succesful individual, a young Leonardo would quite likely have been just as anxious about what what the long future held in store for him as the next young person today. In that regard, it might come across as ironic that Vasari has recorded Leonardo lamenting in his deathbed, aged 67, that "he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should have done."
In the end, it's not unwarranted to consider the author's question "Do children today have useful childhoods?" carrying a due amount of presumptuousness as well. While lamenting how society tends to shoehorn millions into a corset of conformance towards norms and values, it would be quite ironical to fall into the same trap and subject younger generations to different, yet at the same time equally high, expectations and standards maximally living up to purported 'agency' given for the sake of 'agency'.
The author opens with a description of (in)equality in very different contexts, in order to put a thesis in front of us: it's not possible to devise and apply an absolute definition of equality based on first principles, because the meaning or significance of equality is rooted in the complexity of our human condition.
How we approach equality is always context dependent.
Your argument to split the inheritance equally is just as valid as splitting inequally as far as the Universe and the rest of humanity is concerned. Whereas from the point of view of the parents, favoring one strategy over the other is based on moral principle as well as opportunity costs. The relationship between children and children/parents being a factor of varying importance.
As far as states are concerned, preserving social mobility isn't the end goal; it's a way station. The main goal of a state is to ensure the survival of a collective. No more, no less. Let's not forget that a 'state' only exists as a social construct. Equality and inequality alike are a function of how the vast number of interests - needs and wants - of individuals either align or collide with each other.
When you look at both families and states, you will see that similar dynamics and behaviors are at play. Individuals will always make a cost/benefit calculation in order to find out the extent to which a given strategy will yield value; either by contributing to the group and/or choose their own personal gain over the group. The main difference is the context, and so different variables will be used to calculate trade offs.
As far as social mobility is concerned, your parents will have very different motivators to fund your high-ed schooling as opposed to what a state is willing to facilitate.
The latter will only invest in individuals to the extent that doing so ensures the benefit of the collective, but there's little incentive to go beyond that. The idea that the state "should take care of its citizens" has always been and will always be at odds with the individual interests of those same citizens.
Hence why the dilapitated state of an education or healthcare system isn't a pressing problem until it becomes a problem for too many individuals and it threatens the survival of the collective as a whole.
The main concern of the state is not to pursue an ideal amount of equality amongst its citizens, but an optimum amount to ensure its continued existence. Whereas your parents will always hope that an ideal situation can be attained for the sake of their own children... which is very much a personal interest indeed.
Close by where I live is a monument for civilians who were taken from their houses and shot by the German occupiers during the last months of WWII. Simply because they were suspected of having distributed pamphlets. There wasn't even evidence to that claim, and retribution was a thing.
I passed that monument countless of times during my youth, giving me pause to contemplate.
It's a tangible reminder of what ultimately happens when people stay silent about something as final and poignant as one group denying the existence of another group for whatever reasons.
I have no problem with expressing differences over world views. I take issue when that world view entails denying the other side's existence because of differences, and a fervent intent to act on that notion.
It's a matter of boundaries, and speaking up.