If something matters enough for you, then don't rely on it being provided by someone else.It sounds like it is a selfish sentiment, but hear me out---it is actually more pragmatic than selfish.
Back in the day, most things that matter to us are pretty concrete and easy to see, because they are mostly physical artifacts. A gift from someone, the refrigerator, stove, a couch---these are just some examples of physical artifacts that matter to us. Of course I have actually skipped a few steps in not going far enough into the past, since I have leaked in things that rely on micro-controllers. The thing is, micro-controller based equipment was the start of the era where the things that matter enough to us is no longer wholly owned/maintained by us any more as we rely upon the manufacturers and their proxies to provide the necessary trouble-shooting and repairs. That is, until the economics of scale have commoditised the micro-controllers and other electronics involved, making it easier to get parts, and very eventually with the coming of the so-called Information Age, the necessary manuals needed to explain how to use the said parts to fix the diagnosed problem.
But as time marched on, what matters to us slowly straddles into the abstract world of data, and with it, communication/interaction with other people across large distances, people whom technology have helped made them acquaintances or even friends of some sort. The complex interplay of the underlying mechanisms that support all that used to run by enthusiasts (think BBSes) which had to run on an existing physical infrastructure that thankfully had been classified as a type of utility then. Nowadays, when we talk of the ``Internet'' or even the ``Web'', people just think it is Google, Facebook, Reddit, or whatever commonly used social media platform, forgetting about the heterogenous nature.
That is important to note because it marked the surrendering of control and maintenance to some other person, in which case a corporate entity whose raison d'ê was to be profitable. Now I am not arguing that being profitable is wrong, but I am saying that this means the services that these companies provide, no matter how enticing, good, and useful they are, will be subjected to the whims and fancies of their controllers in terms of whether to continue existing the way they were, to be nerfed to increase profitability through whatever business model they have (subscription/micro-payments seem to be in vogue), or dropped outright if they no longer serve any purpose to the company from the money-making perspective.
This means that if the content/service provided by these companies matter enough, one should ensure that at some fundamental level, one has a back-up plan. This is more so for content, since digital content is the closest analogue we have to the concept of physical access/ownership of an artifact. In the muddy world of digital media ownership, it is probably better to think of it as being access-driven as opposed to ownership-driven---all digital media (software, audio-visual, text) are essentially finite-lengthed binary large integers, so calling it ``ownership'' even without the complicating factors of copyright laws is a tad awkward. Storage of these digital media is many orders of magnitude cheaper than storing physical artifacts, because the actual volume/mass required per bit of storage is many orders of magnitudes smaller than physical things.
Thus, if the content matters enough, one should really ensure that there are alternative ways of retrieving the content later on, and not rely on someone else to ``always'' provide it to you. A good way is to ensure data replication across different providers, but considering how these days Amazon Web Services and other cloud service providers from Google and Microsoft are leasing their machines to companies to build their own services, it may not be as redundant as previously indicated.
So long story short, make sure you can physically hold the device that holds the content that you care about for peace of mind. Because doing otherwise is effectively renting access to the content, and when the access is terminated through lack of payment or other reasons, that content is gone for good. It's akin to renting an apartment, except with less regulation controlling what the landlord is allowed to do since legislation for the digital world is quite spotty at best.
As for services that one cares about, most of them can be achieved through using various open source versions. The big catch here is the need to be technical proficient enough to use the alternative open source versions, and to be sufficiently patient in teaching those whom we want to use the service with to use them as well. That last part is tricky to pull off, and is a large reason why many open source projects do not get that deep into the mainstream, unless something really drastic happens that made the original strongly controlled service no longer as feasible.
``But MT, are you inherently saying that the companies that offer such services for payment are evil?'' No, I'm not saying nor implying that. It's a free market---companies can do what they think that can generate the best profits for them since that is their perogative, but I also think that consumers need to know that they have their options and own needs/rights that they should seriously consider every now and then instead of being pushed about by the companies.
More importantly for other smaller companies that rely on services provided by larger ones is to remember that there is no free lunch---one day the services provided by the larger company may mutate away from what they require, especially if they are not among the valued customer group of the service-provider. When (not if!) that day comes, is the company ready to switch over to something else to continue with their business, or will they flounder about, cursing and swearing at all who hear?
Actually, the principle outlined in my first paragraph is applicable even outside that of the technology domain, the initial inspiration for this rant. Consider the case of people wanting more friends. Mechanically, it means that one would like the service of friendship be provided to oneself by someone else. But that never comes out of a vacuum---it is often better to first be a friend to someone else, from which an actual friendship may blossom. It may sound like a stretch, but the principle idea is that of how an active engagement/involvement to achieve a goal is more effective than passively waiting for the goal to be achieved for one.
That's enough out of the old windbag for now. I'm kinda debating whether to binge watch some Hellsing OVA or continue with the reading that I described yesterday, or play some video games---still undecided on all that. All I know is that I have decided to have some nice 麻辣香锅 for my meal-of-the-day.
Till the next update.
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