It feels like all the joy I used to feel from being an enthusiast has been completely voided as computing has become the modern vector for fascism and surveillance. I find myself recoiling from all online spaces, even independent and open source ones that I’d loved and supported in the past.
It’s been an exceptionally strange impulse to go from having an elaborate online presence to now feeling like the only acceptable way to engage with the network is to have as minimal of an online footprint as possible.
This especially hurts when it feels like an issue of skilling, where I know how to do certain tasks with computers, but have to teach myself for the first time the analogue alternatives that my parents and their parents likely already knew well.
How have you chosen to deal with it? Do you find yourself moving away from computing and the internet, despite formerly loving it as a hobby? Have you replaced things that computers used to do for you with analogue replacements?
I’m curious how other people are experiencing this.
I still like occasional tinkering with computers, not in depth but on a Linux newbie level :) And I like it. Not only did I learn loads of new stuff and was fascinated by the way Linux works, but I also am glad, that there are less predatory alternatives to Windows and MacOS.
So yes, while big tech like Google, OpenAI and Meta are increadibly disgusting, I feel fine by staying away from their services when possible.
What I really dislike is AI Bots picking apart each and every forum post, blog or publicly available images as training data (correct me if I’m wrong). To this I don’t have a quick solution. What the user can do is to cautiously think about what they posy online. Playing the long game, we need better legislation in the tech sector, such as: Consent for data scalping is mandatory (let me dream, ok. Please)