I looked over this piece, "The Decline of Computers as a General Purpose Technology" which I found on Hacker News (via skimfeed, a news aggregator). Indeed there are generic "personal computers" suitable for demands of school/work/etc. The Chromebook is a microcosm of the browser-based "subscription machine"—by choosing to operate on a Chromebook a user is seeking a low-cost, functional solution to what most people do with technology: interfacing with Big Tech. Users with more specific needs will know they need other tools. For instance, a business may know they need to purchase servers, a gamer may know about the latest fancy graphics cards, and a YouTuber may know some things about audio and video equipment and network speed requirements.

Diversity via Hierarchy

Consider birds. Different birds have different ways of living; some have long necks to dip in the water, other birds have beaks that are effective at different tasks—pecking holes, crushing seeds, etc.

This is a general pattern we see everywhere; and as described above with technology, we can't really get away from this pattern. While we might try to impose requirements to standardize systems (consider: a fast food chain), hierarchy always seems to come back and similar sorts of divisions are found again and again.

With "computers", of various kinds we're seeing patterns like...

• Everyone is expected to have a "smartphone" (nowadays usually just called a phone); this is used to verify ID and stuff
• You are expected to have a mailbox (e-mail) and a "desk" (office software)
• People have various forms of "recreation"—notice how gaming has become more "inclusive" in that it includes people of all ages, male and female, etc; watching videos online is something most people do
• Social media accounts as well as accounts on big platforms like Amazon and Ebay are analogs to various places you may go—the marketplace, social gatherings etc

The above things form the digital "person" which governments, employers, etc can track you with. Having the hardware of a phone is basically all that is required for this. This is the "baseline" urban person.

Now, there are ways in which we can "upgrade" our digital "person". I once jokingly said something like, "if you give me a laptop, I can do ten times as much as I could without one"—indeed many of the "skills" that people train themselves for these days rely on certain systems being in place.

Going above and beyond the baseline phone'd "person", we have different divisions. First, there are the "latest phone" type people; often, these people are well-paid so they can enjoy the latest equipment to... go on and post to social media, buy stuff through platforms, etc. This is like Normie++; this sort of person doesn't need to possess any specialized technical knowledge or anything, but because of their place in society they are distinguished by having a fancier phone. This is similar to having expensive, name brand clothes.

Next, there are the technician "power users" of the first order. Often these people have laptops or desktop computers. They understand a little bit about what they are using beyond the average uncritical user. I would put many (PC) gamers into this category; they are aware of different machines—otherwise they might just purchase a console and play games in the sort of "uniform" way that a Normie++ would. I'll call this group PC Gamers.

Then we have Capitalists who don't just consoom with their electronic devices; they actively are involved in getting money in some way or another by making use of their technology. These people approach computers not just as a "home" for the digital "person", they operate on computers as a business. I would include "content creator" types in this category—for them, places like YouTube are not just for play/exploration—they are for business. People directly involved in buying/selling good and services related to augmenting the digital "person" are here.

Another group of people I'll call untouchscreenables. These people reject the digital "person" as much as possible OR are people that simply can't/won't learn the "new way of doing things". In some respect, these people are "out of the system", but in other ways they are simply just not inputting into the system. You see, social media sites may create shadow profiles of you, inferring your existence from other people's communications... ¹

Finally, there are the Feds. These people may be literal federal agents, or they might be people like big tech workers who have direct sway over hardware & software (the "fabric" of the matrix) and digital "persons".

The categories I give above can of course be debated, reformulated, and so on, but the general point is that there is a hierarchy and we can find distinct types. In the natural world, we can see how different animals have different characteristics. Likewise, we see that people fall into patterns. And even in a new, human-made thing like the Internet and this big network of machines, we don't see everyone becoming a build-a-PC hobbyist nerd. Rather, we see distinct classes arise.