I’ll admit it, I’m a nerd. A geek extraordinaire. A pseudo-hacker-wannabe.
But I hate using digital technology.
Let me clarify: I love the idea of technology. But I can’t stand the way it’s being, and has been, developed.
When I was young, I devoured sci-fi books by great authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and so forth. I was absolutely enraptured by the idea of what technology could theoretically do. Robots, artificial intelligence, space travel, and all sorts of fantastic things. Along came Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, and it seemed like our bright future was right around the corner. And you have to understand, we were all waiting for that utopia. We wanted it to become reality.
Then we started noticing the warning signs. George Orwell’s 1984. Films like Blade Runner, Ghost In the Shell, (the original, not the live-action remake) and even The Matrix warned us of possible ultimate end-game scenarios. It was exhilarating, yes, but also a dark foreshadowing of the consequences of technology.
Fast-forward thirty years. Now we have smartphones, internet-connected fridges, self-driving auto-updating cars, toasters that can tweet, and absolutely none of it does what I thought technology was supposed to do: make life simpler. The idea was that computers and technology were supposed to take care of the mundane things, so that people could get back to just enjoying life. But that’s not what happened at all.
Instead, we find that technology has gradually overtaken and invaded every aspect of our lives. It doesn’t simplify things and get out of the way; instead, technology has become our new God.
It drives everything we think about. It monitors everything we do. It demands our attention, and tells us what we should and shouldn’t think. It defines our self-worth, it drives our social interactions, it manages our finances. It controls our vehicles and provides our entertainment. It forcefully shapes our very interaction with reality.
Instead of technology liberating humanity, we have become slaves to it.
There are a few things that have allowed this to happen. Technology is expensive to develop, which means all the “really cool stuff” is invented by patent-mongering mafia corporations. To offset the cost of developing tech, they harvest user info, and sell that to marketing firms. Then the market demands lower prices, so they outsource production to third-world slave factories.
We were promised convenience, but the whole thing was a bait-and-switch. Nothing comes without cost. And our cost is our independence, security, and privacy. We didn’t originally choose this model; it’s not what technology was supposed to be. But because of what high technology costs, that’s what’s been decided is required. People would use alternatives if they knew they could.
Out there- hidden in plain sight- are millions of people like me who want the benefits of technology without the horrible Orwellian price. But is that even possible in today’s world? I’m glad to say, yes it is, but most people don’t know anything about it.
It IS possible to have technology that does what you want, and nothing else. You just have to build it yourself. Because if you get it from a company, they decide what you can and can’t do with it, and what it will cost you.
And therein lies the problem: very few people know how to build anything from scratch any more. Most people couldn’t even put parts together to assemble something electronic. And programming? I’m not the slowest guy around, but I can’t stand programming. It makes my brain hurt.
However, there are tons of open-source software and hardware projects out there, and I’ve been following several of them. I started building my own guitar pedals. I learned how to program an Arduino. I can build my own car from spare parts if I have to. I can use a manual film camera, know how to use a typewriter, and can tune a carburetor. When it really comes down to it, I don’t need digital technology. But it’s everywhere. I honestly spend more time figuring out how not to use invasive technology than I spend learning to use it.
I can’t rely on tech companies to give me what I want. It doesn’t exist. I can’t rely on corporations to make ethical choices about my personal information. They just won’t. I can’t expect companies to be transparent, or helpful, or concerned about anything except making money. Because that’s what companies do.
If the only technology I can use requires me to surrender my personal rights, then is it really worth using it? For now there are still alternatives, thankfully. If it weren’t for Linux, I’m not sure what I would do. But even then, I’m still at the mercy of whatever the developers feel like doing. It’s still a compromise. I can take it for what it is, but I can’t expect them to update things in the future. More than once, I’ve had to deal with using an open-source program that someone decided they just didn’t want to maintain any more.
I no longer expect technology to be the utopia we were promised. Instead, it looks more like a gaudy parody; a play off of films like Idiocracy, Wall-E, or Back To the Future. Instead of spending half a trillion dollars on advertising a year, maybe we could pay off national debts? Help impoverished countries? Fix horribly broken education systems? Cure diseases?
Nope. None of that is going to happen.
Ultimately, technology has failed to live up to the hype. I suppose it never really promised those things; we just naively expected them. We sort of knew what we were getting, but it was such a gradual paradigm shift, we didn’t say anything. And advertising kept pushing us to “get the next upgraded thing!” because it would be- somehow- better. They always failed to mention how it would be worse, because if they had, nobody would have bought it. But there is almost always a trade-off.
So what do you do when you’re a geek who hates using digital technology?
I don’t know. But I’m getting to the point where I no longer want what I don’t need- and I don’t need digital technology.