automation

We're putting software in places it doesn't belong. Two short rants about software making things worse.

Making things less thingy

A little while back BMW tried to charge people to use the seat heaters that were already installed in their cars. They reneged after some bad press, but the trend continues. Here's Audi's page on features you can pay to unlock.

This is possible because software is used to artificially hamstring the car. Imagine if you bought a car with a sun roof that was bolted in place because you didn't pay to "unlock" it upfront. Enthusiasts would figure out how to cheaply remove those bolts, and the car company would eventually give up on the idea. Unfortunately, software is notoriously difficult to alter in place, and circumvention of "digital locks" is generally considered illegal.

Businesses can use software to hold their product's essence for ransom.

In 2019 Nike released some high-tech shoes that you could control with an app, and last year they discontinued the app. Some of the features of the shoes don't work without the app. Until someone reverse engineers the setup, fans of the shoes will have to keep the app around on an old phone and make sure nothing gets automatically updated and removed.

The product is less useful because the business got sick of maintaining the software interface.

It's convenient but it's less good

Many restaurants around here (Brisbane, Australia) have adoped online ordering. Instead of talking to staff, you tap on your phone. It can break in silly ways when compare to talking with a person; it's extremely unlikely that the colour of your t-shirt is going to give the waitress a seizure, but it's not uncommon for the "order" button on the menu app to freeze because of some quirk in your phone's web browser.

It's certainly more convenient, in some respect, but I've been starting to think that not every convenience is worth it. I've been struggling with feelings of isolation for a little while, and I've been noticing the way that convenience can be at odds with connection. In 2025 it's extremely convenient to not engage with other people.

It's also convenient to type out a big rant while sitting at my desk in my house. It would be much less convenient to commiserate with friends over dinner or beers. I worry that "social media" (including UpTrust) will become the dominant social substrate out of convience, even though there are much better non-software alternatives.

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…