It's even worst than all that. As a silicon valley dweeb who quit it all to start a goat farm, we, including myself, lack the support of anyone other than the family we have created. Everyone is stuck staring at screens all the time. Everyone is living such a comfortably numb life that you cannot even relate to the non luddites anymore. They are so hooked on quick dopamine hits that you really can only rely on yourself to fix your own situation, but 99% of the world is hopelessly careening towards a digital oblivion. Recent converts to the digital life are worst than the previous converts. Your writing and others is the only light at the end of an increasingly lengthened tunnel and my fellow humans have no way out.
Combine that with, farming, an old way of life, is not for the faint hearted.
Only the Amish and conservative Mennonites have a clue.
Anglo Ortho and I touched on a lot of the problems you're speaking of here in our recent stream on The Rape of Man and Nature. Both of us were grasping towards a positive and realistic path forward with technology. Anglo seems to be hoping for something like "alternative Progress" that leads to living in a Star Trek future in which the common cold is extinct but religion is still possible.
If AO and I do a sequel to that stream might you be interested in joining us and sharing some of your perspective?
Thanks for the white pill, Distributist. Wielding technology as a craft that we direct rather than following the dictates of a non-human AI algorithm sounds like a great step in the right direction. Craft and discipline is the future, not consumption and indulgence.
Great piece, brought back memories of SuSe 6.1 running a bulky 486 server in my teenager room that would automatically dial up an internet connection when it detected IP traffic, driving up our phone bill due to bad config...
As for the rest, I often wondered what a timeline would look like where nerds who just love tinkering developed communication technology organically, without corporate or financial interests or even worse interests. There's just so much nobody has ever wanted or asked for and now is addicted to. I fear that it's too late now, and that the whole thing must fall down and run its course in some way before we can maybe create a new timeline?
Great piece Dave. I have noticed parallels in electronic music production. Somewhere around the year 2003 digital synths became more powerful than the average user could comprehend.
For example, one of the last workhorse digital synths (before everything went in the box) was the E-MU MP-7. The manual is 300 something pages, and you can take the machine apart to install new ROM sets -- it is difficult, but all in the manual. By contrast, a Yamaha MODX i recently purchased doesn’t even ship with a user manual! All that came in the box was a “quick start” brochure.
Musically the result of this technology is that rather than artists imagining the timbres they wish to create using machines to expand their breadth of expression, people surf the presets and the machine ends up dictating the sound/atmosphere of the music.
IMO the solution to this is to know your limits -- be cautious using musical equipment if you haven’t even read the manual. To mix metaphors, if you go into the gym and try to squat 50lb more than your max, you’re liable to be injured. We should adopt this cautious attitude to technology.
The prospective approach toward technology is similar to the Amish - not opposed to new tech but certainly choose to be masters of it…and in doing so find much of what we moderns embrace to be not worth employing.
I'm a 90s kid, and the discussion on Linux pretty well summs up my thoughts when I went to purchase my own computer in the military: "If I don't get Windows, then I will not be able to easily enjoy the things I want to enjoy on a computer." To an early twenty-something adult, that justification made an easy conclusion. It wasn't until much later that I realized what an opportunity we lost due to the market of convenience.
In the first decade and a half of the century I was reading Neil Postman and running my PC on Ubuntu, and I fear I lost my way for a while. I appreciate this course-correcting reminder and rallying cry.
It's even worst than all that. As a silicon valley dweeb who quit it all to start a goat farm, we, including myself, lack the support of anyone other than the family we have created. Everyone is stuck staring at screens all the time. Everyone is living such a comfortably numb life that you cannot even relate to the non luddites anymore. They are so hooked on quick dopamine hits that you really can only rely on yourself to fix your own situation, but 99% of the world is hopelessly careening towards a digital oblivion. Recent converts to the digital life are worst than the previous converts. Your writing and others is the only light at the end of an increasingly lengthened tunnel and my fellow humans have no way out.
Combine that with, farming, an old way of life, is not for the faint hearted.
Only the Amish and conservative Mennonites have a clue.
Anglo Ortho and I touched on a lot of the problems you're speaking of here in our recent stream on The Rape of Man and Nature. Both of us were grasping towards a positive and realistic path forward with technology. Anglo seems to be hoping for something like "alternative Progress" that leads to living in a Star Trek future in which the common cold is extinct but religion is still possible.
If AO and I do a sequel to that stream might you be interested in joining us and sharing some of your perspective?
Thanks for the white pill, Distributist. Wielding technology as a craft that we direct rather than following the dictates of a non-human AI algorithm sounds like a great step in the right direction. Craft and discipline is the future, not consumption and indulgence.
Great piece, brought back memories of SuSe 6.1 running a bulky 486 server in my teenager room that would automatically dial up an internet connection when it detected IP traffic, driving up our phone bill due to bad config...
As for the rest, I often wondered what a timeline would look like where nerds who just love tinkering developed communication technology organically, without corporate or financial interests or even worse interests. There's just so much nobody has ever wanted or asked for and now is addicted to. I fear that it's too late now, and that the whole thing must fall down and run its course in some way before we can maybe create a new timeline?
Great piece Dave. I have noticed parallels in electronic music production. Somewhere around the year 2003 digital synths became more powerful than the average user could comprehend.
For example, one of the last workhorse digital synths (before everything went in the box) was the E-MU MP-7. The manual is 300 something pages, and you can take the machine apart to install new ROM sets -- it is difficult, but all in the manual. By contrast, a Yamaha MODX i recently purchased doesn’t even ship with a user manual! All that came in the box was a “quick start” brochure.
Musically the result of this technology is that rather than artists imagining the timbres they wish to create using machines to expand their breadth of expression, people surf the presets and the machine ends up dictating the sound/atmosphere of the music.
IMO the solution to this is to know your limits -- be cautious using musical equipment if you haven’t even read the manual. To mix metaphors, if you go into the gym and try to squat 50lb more than your max, you’re liable to be injured. We should adopt this cautious attitude to technology.
The prospective approach toward technology is similar to the Amish - not opposed to new tech but certainly choose to be masters of it…and in doing so find much of what we moderns embrace to be not worth employing.
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287028/amish-community-not-anti-technology-just-more-thoughful
I'm a 90s kid, and the discussion on Linux pretty well summs up my thoughts when I went to purchase my own computer in the military: "If I don't get Windows, then I will not be able to easily enjoy the things I want to enjoy on a computer." To an early twenty-something adult, that justification made an easy conclusion. It wasn't until much later that I realized what an opportunity we lost due to the market of convenience.
In the first decade and a half of the century I was reading Neil Postman and running my PC on Ubuntu, and I fear I lost my way for a while. I appreciate this course-correcting reminder and rallying cry.
You sound like Boromir. I'm skeptical of anything but the bare minimum.