This oppressiveness is not inherent to computers, it's inherent to the people and institutions making use of them. The examples in the article say it all: government bureaucracies, beverage dispensers. They own the computers and impose their own rules on us, rules like deadlines and brand checking. We don't want these rules but they impose it on us all the same.
Computers are neutral technology. It's just that we are increasingly losing control of them. We're no longer the ones making the rules, the corporations and governments are. The computers belong to them now, they're just letting us use them. We no longer define our choices, we choose among the options they provide for us. Freely programmable computers are actually quite powerful and subversive which is why there are constant attempts to control them: radiofrequency hardware firmware, digital rights management, encryption regulation. If left unchecked, the power of computing will cause massive damage to the entire intellectual property industry as well as many government functions such as law enforcement. Computing freedom is therefore against their agendas: they want to transform computers into tools of oppression in order to preserve the status quo or change it in their favor. We can buy iPhones but they're not really ours, they still belong to Apple, the software is under Apple's control so when they suddenly decide to oppress us with client side scanning there's nothing we can do.
Computers are neutral technology. It's just that we are increasingly losing control of them. We're no longer the ones making the rules, the corporations and governments are. The computers belong to them now, they're just letting us use them. We no longer define our choices, we choose among the options they provide for us. Freely programmable computers are actually quite powerful and subversive which is why there are constant attempts to control them: radiofrequency hardware firmware, digital rights management, encryption regulation. If left unchecked, the power of computing will cause massive damage to the entire intellectual property industry as well as many government functions such as law enforcement. Computing freedom is therefore against their agendas: they want to transform computers into tools of oppression in order to preserve the status quo or change it in their favor. We can buy iPhones but they're not really ours, they still belong to Apple, the software is under Apple's control so when they suddenly decide to oppress us with client side scanning there's nothing we can do.