Free is a lie

It’s time for a design revolution in open technology. Companies like Google and Facebook that dominate the internet promise us free services in exchange for the right to watch and study us; to mine and farm us. Like quarries, like livestock, we are natural resources to be exploited in a brave new digital world of corporate surveillance that threatens our most fundamental freedoms. Probably everyone would object the mailman checking our post, so why don’t we mind Google looking through our email?

There are open alternatives but they are too difficult for most of us to use. It is time to bring design thinking to open source and build beautiful, seamless open consumer products that are easy to use and which respect our fundamental freedoms.