The past few years have been rough on me, in terms of “What technologies I care to and am willing to use.” There have been more than a few upsets

Tech Philosophy Ponderings 2022

submited by

Style Pass

2022-05-23 06:00:09

The past few years have been rough on me, in terms of “What technologies I care to and am willing to use.” There have been more than a few upsets on the (admittedly somewhat non-standard) path I was on, and I’ve been trying to think through more of “What fundamentals should I really work from?” - and if these are even remotely compatible with actually using modern consumer tech. I won’t claim this is carved in stone, fully formed, because things have ways of changing, but this is my attempt to write out some of it, requiring me to make things somewhat more concrete in the process.

I want to think through how I use technology in the modern world, how I should use technology in the modern world, and what paths are of value versus the standard default - and even against my historic defaults. Are we deciding our own paths, or are we just letting advertising and tech companies drive us down the profitable roads for them?

If you don’t really think about technology that much, you’re likely to be on one of the “default tech paths” - the nature of it will depend on your income and desire to have the latest and greatest, perhaps, but the defaults anymore tend to be very profitable to the tech companies providing the goodies in exchange for your behavioral data, and tend to be fairly expensive. As you can afford upgrades, or every few years, buy the latest and greatest, and get rid of (trade in, pass down, or sell) your old clunker that just isn’t as fast anymore. Come on, it’s a few years old and, of course, a few OS versions behind.