IBM launched the PCjr and it was a cover story. When's the last time anybody wrote about a new desktop? I guess Apple and Framework do something interesting occasionally. Does anybody else?

- old off-lease hardware providing our services

- those services are based around free software and keep our data where we can 'see' it. No Apple-Google-Meta-Microsoft-etc accounts needed or wanted.

- older laptops, notebooks, mobile devices running free software

Content filtering takes care of the advertising and other data parasites. As to 'the attention economy' that is up to you as an individual to keep out of your life. Ditch the legacy media and you're already on the right trail, find alternatives where needed and you'll be fine.

If some product is locked down you just have to refrain from using it no matter how enticing it looks, no matter how slick the advertising, no matter how heavy the group pressure. You may have to live with your text messages showing up in a different colour on the screens of those who drank the Kool-Aid, you may have to insist on using a different communication channel than the one pushed by FaceMetabook, etc.

In short there is still a bright future for those who know how coax it from the materials at hand, you'll just have to fight the parasites who always appear in thriving ecosystems. Squash them like the bugs they are and you'll be fine unless you happen to live somewhere where the state uses repressive means to keep everyone and everything under its control. If this is the case you can try to fight it, especially while they have not achieved full control and there is still a chance of turning the ship around. If not you're probably best off by moving out of that state, the world is a big place and there's likely to be some country where your skills are welcomed.

We watch AI models become better each month, not in ads, but in blogs and posts. While not making cover stories, new models do make the news. I was so excited when Dall-E first came out, I even hosted a guess-the-prompt party four years ago with what seems now like prehistoric-level generated images. The AI industry may face more scrutiny and criticism than the computer hardware industry of the olden days, but we even have a semblance of open source communities who are trying to democratize this for everyone.

All this to say, similar sentiments still exist in the frontier, it's just that the frontier moved.

Well, there could be a cohort of Mondo readers who have been on them for the past 40 years. They might be able to say if there have been long term consequences.