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C.S.'s avatar

Good job not enabling although your Mom is still going to need your help managing tech despite your intent to be a catalyst for change. More realistic way to create change would be to suggest all millennials who are losing time and money helping their parents navigate tech - they need to contact local news sources with their stories. It will show two things: 1. The largest generation since the boomers does not quietly condone this nonsense. 2. They CARE about the well being of their parents. In an aside Adam, caring for the well being of multiple generations has been the American way for a very long time. Tech’s impersonal heart of stone evolution has been influenced by smart millennials who were forced to grow up in a brutal dog eat dog world. These paradigms have been programmed into algorithms and written into today’s service processes. Stand against it. Stand for your loved ones. Set boundaries with big tech while you still can.

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Dave Woolcock's avatar

Dave’s third law: “mediocrity is a better business model than excellence”. I coined this in the 90s when the first wave of ISPs were run by techies who knew their stuff (I recall ringing up at quarter to midnight and getting spot-on customer support). Having built up their reputation for excellence, they then sold out to a mainstream ISP, promising to continue the excellent service. They lied. They sacked all the techies and replaced them with call centres and scripts… ignore the actual problem, get customer to reinstall the software yada yada. Lying (aka marketing) is cheaper than fixing things.

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