The SPLASH conference recently sparked discussions about the state of technology and its impact on innovation. A common theme among attendees was the concern that the rise of systems without elegance, introspection, trust, or capability is a result of the economic environment driven by capitalism. Speakers like Alan Kay highlighted the issue, saying that students are not learning interesting things in college due to the emphasis on industrial applications. The blog post "Before You Can Have Smalltalk, You Must First Defeat Capitalism" argues that the lack of surplus and precarity in modern unrestricted rentier capitalism is a major obstacle to building beautiful systems like Smalltalk.

Source: https://www.mgaudet.ca/blog/2024/10/28/before-you-can-have-smalltalk-you-must-first-defeat-capitalism