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’m getting more involved in that I’m discovering more open source projects that I can support.
Open source really gives me hope. Instead of a profit motive, communities form and work together out of passion and dedication to a project or idea.
That’s really invigorating to me. And, in many ways, can often be a big fuck you to our capitalist overlords. I’m working on presentations and such to teach my friends and spread the word about various projects and better op sec to make it all the harder to harvest our data.
I completely get it. It’s been so demonized in recent years that it’s completely understandable to feel this way. I literally can’t fathom how I was ever excited to take an AI course 3-4 years ago in grad school lol
Here’s how I’ve been dealing with it without letting it crush my interest in computing.
In terms of online spaces:
There’s always an alternative. You being on Lemmy right now is evidence of this. The big media conglomerates want you to believe there are no alternatives. That’s how they function, they use social pressure to get you to conform. Enough friends badger you to get facebook and you eventually get a facebook, even if you hate it.
Gradually move away from these circles, don’t allow yourself to be pressured.
The internet is a vaster ecospace than you can possibly imagine, despite how many people believe it’s limited to cycling between the same 3-4 apps. You should try checking out Neocities sometime if you don’t believe me. Other people who haven’t allowed their passions for computing to be drowned out still exist, it’s just that the voices of the mundane crowd who don’t know anything about computing or have ever had any desire to learn are louder and currently propagate the online space.
Also, never underestimate the power of rigid filters. You’ll begin to notice so many other things once every other post you see is no longer a catastrophic news update about how the 1% is currently raping the earth and ruining life for the average citizen. It can feel tempting to always stay “in the loop”… but the truth is, most of the things we stay up to date on aren’t as important as we think they are.
Yeah, maybe them building an AI data center in your local district seems like urgent news you have to have… but you already knew these data centers are bad and being built everywhere. You were probably already going to vote against that the next chance you got in a local election. Beyond that, if you aren’t planning any local protests… the most productive thing you’d do that day is vent anger online about it with other strangers. Seriously, try to limit your intake to just world news and a local newspaper or the most important stuff that happened that week. If a new war starts I assure you there’s no way you’ll miss it.
In terms of AI:
Here’s a really simple platitude that actually helps more than you think.
“Blame the artist, not the pencil.”
It’s just another tool, not the end of civilization or the “singularity”, or anything people really want to build it up to be. Quite frankly, it’s not that cool or spooky at all. I’m 1000 times more spooked by the trends I’ve seen develop in humans dialing back basic data privacy rights than I am about ChatGPT’s actual capabilities.
In fact, I use AI regularly. It’s all about balance, just like any other tool you use with computer literacy. You don’t download random files, click weird links, or upload your social security number. Same principles with AI.
- I use AI to troubleshoot when I’m programming and it saves me countless hours of searching 15+ year old stackexchange posts: I don’t use it to program my code.
- I use AI to roleplay sometimes because the engaging feedback helps spark my creativity: I don’t use it to write my stories or texts for me.
- I use AI to help research complex questions to aid my comprehension, such as “Why is manufacturing a cure for AIDS so difficult and have any recent promising developments been made in the field?”, not as a one-stop shop for all my factual knowledge.
As draining as it is to find a new AI spyware thing I have to install everytime my browser updates or I open a Microsoft program these days, AI itself is not this big evil thing. And if you have less patience for it than I do, someone who stops to look up the instructions on how to manually disable OneDrive updates in Administrative Tools to stop reinstalling Copilot, take the other people’s advice in this thread and go completely open source. Try Linux. It may save you a huge headache in the long run.
Lastly, in terms of creative liberty:
Always remember that the online space was created for us, not for them.
I love messing around with Stylus these days and especially publicly made GreasyFork scripts to see just how much I can break websites and get them to do my bidding. While everyone else is lamenting bad website updates with angry “Goodbye forever” and “I’ve unsubscribed!! (yes I was paying)” posts, I’ve already fixed the issue with a script or some basic coding.
In addition, uBlock Origin, VPNs, PopUpOff and a handful of other useful extensions are all your friends, and will help save you from countless hours of irritation of having to navigate spaces with no functional UI in mind. I haven’t had issues viewing an article on some offbrand newssite or a mainstream paywall in ages. I found out they banned imgur in my country because of lemmy posts, not because I couldn’t access it.
And never throw in the towel because something’s “gone forever”. I’ve already found a new piracy website after the last 5 went down. I’ve already started migrating pages from archive.org to archive.is. Someone has already reuploaded the entire decades old collection of english dub One Piece episodes that went down because of a copyright strike. You know what they say, “once it’s out on the internet, it stays there forever.”
Final thoughts
From one computer enthusiast to another, don’t let the current state of the world take away your passions from you. Remember, at the end of the day, these are all just tools. It only matters what you do with them.
Here’s a little video I’ll leave with you in case it helps cheer you up.
Microsoft Windows 95 Launch with Bill Gates & Jay Leno (1995) (be prepared, it’s corny as hell lol)
“In fact, I use AI regularly”, not critisiing because that’s the world we live in now. But its also obvious. My question is are you just directing your life, and then projecting it with your Jarvis? No judgement. Just curious.
Speaking for myself, there are many things that I couldn’t ever hope to do before AI became popularized. I don’t speak Japanese, can’t draw, lack the money to hire humans, let alone give them a fair wage. Any dreams I wanted to fulfill, simply are not possible without skill, social connections, and wealth. I lacked agency long before the rise of AI.
With AI tools, I can translate or retranslate foreign games, which is quite nice for me. There are quite a few niche games that won’t ever receive much attention, being only of interest to a select few humans. Hoping for the good luck of another person to donate their time and life to such causes, isn’t practical.
Plus, I don’t particularly like the nuts and bolts of computing. I am having a hard time getting the .git of DevilutionX to build, because it is missing SDL.h, and the repository instructions seem dated. An AI would likely understand how to fix that issue, any other weird technical problems. Learning the dependencies, console commands, and so forth is just something I don’t want to do with my lifespan. I want to just enjoy my media, without technical hurdles getting in the way.
We should built our own internet, with blackjack and hookers!
Use computers for as much fun things that I can. So a lot of games, programming my own games, designing things. Stuff like that.
I use to love playing video games. When MMOS hit I was all for it. It would be like play D&D all the time with your friends. I just wanted to hang with my friends but the min/maxers hit and then the constant grind. I quit caring.
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Cut it down, your computer is not a source of evil. Especially if its a second or third hand buy. People think life is about control, its not. Life is full of things that we cannot control, can only influence, or can only really observe on an individual scale. Now what really helps is activism. Get out with a group of people to affect change. Put more good into the world than evil and your hobbies matter a little less (given they are benign)
What’s interesting and I think is tied into that “people think life is about control” is that I am deeply convinced that the tech barons learned to hate democracy because administering computers and networks is not democratic in nature at all. An admin always has access and controls for everything, nobody votes an admin into position. Hell, we’ve seen numerous Fediverse sites come and go because being an admin is actually a huge task, especially if you’re handling it on your own. Even with that power diffused among multiple administrators, it can often be difficult escape the hierarchical nature of how computers are designed at their core.
As you point out, this isn’t evil, this is a type of tool. Like all tools, it can be used for good or ill, to build or to destroy. Currently we are being overrun with people who want to use it to control everyone else. They certainly think life is about control, and it’s part of why they are so deeply unhappy.
It’s also why the open source world is so fucking precious. The Cathedral versus the Bazaar. The bazaar style of development is such a massive deal because we could extrapolate this kind of governance to other parts of society. I worry deeply for a potential schism in the open source community when Linus Torvalds stops developing from old age or disease or just dying randomly in a car crash.
Open Source is that good that computers are being used for. Outside the corporate funded open source, there’s so many tiny little open source projects for almost anything imaginable, all shared freely so others can bear the fruits as well.
Tech barons have never administered computer.
I feel the same way sometimes. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
- Self hosting as much of my digital footprint as possible, with federated technologies and Foss at the forefront
- Focusing my computer time on my own hobbies and curiosities, just tinkering with the computer, or contributing to open source projects
- Volunteering to help with conferences where I can, and attending hacker and hardware conferences. I have a nice little international group of friends and confidants thanks to that. It helps me to connect with people in person.
This.
If something is a vector for evil, it’s crucial that we invest good in it. And with tech it’s doable and quite enjoyable i’d say.
Same here. I have been moving everything I can to self hosted FOSS, contributing to FOSS projects, and rehabbing old hardware. It’s been fun, I’ve met people from around the world and I’m getting tools I like to be even better.
Locally, I’m working with the library to start Linux days, where we help fix old computers and move them to Linux. There’s been a lot of interest due to Win11.
They way I see it, computers are tools. They can just as easily be used for good as evil.
If people were going around smashing vehicles with hammers, we would (hopefully) work on better law enforcement than ban hammers. Same sort of thing with computers, we need standards and regulations.
I think the actual reality is that governments and justice systems were designed for a pen-and-paper era where letters were still delivered by horsedriven stagecoach.
I think that’s the real task: designing a new type of democratic governance that can keep up with the speed of societal change and technological change.
“The gears of justice turn slowly” made sense in the stagecoach era, because life moved slowly. It does not make sense in an era where we can disseminate information worldwide instantly for pennies.
Yeah I get it. I stopped posting on Reddit, and only will on the fediverse, but even that feels like a surveillance nightmare.
Honestly, these days I try and spend as much time just not on the computer, going outside, building physical stuff, and hanging with friends.
And I would say that, while still problematic, video games honestly feel like the least toxic part of computing these days. Buying a $60 game and playing the hell out of it with friends, (or a genuinely well written game like cyberpunk or control) is still rewarding and feels non toxic.
My parents got a new car and they thought I’d be impressed that it has an iPad for a dashboard and knows who’s driving by using your phone.
And 20 years ago that would have been cool. But now? Now all I see is data harvesting, bad UI, and expensive repairs that must be done at the stealership.
Tech used to be something fun and new, that gave you freedoms and abilities you never thought were possible. But now it’s just another way for companies to ship expensive crap and exploit us. I’d much rather have my dumb car that makes fart noises and won’t even shift without my help.
One thing I did like is that the interior door handles are well-made and easily accessible.
“Stealership”
Ima be… uhh… leasing that. Thanks.
For 36 months with no money down at our spring savings event!
36 month loans are rookie numbers. They’re selling the big expensive trucks on 72month loans.
More than 1/3 of auto loans are over 6 years and they end up paying more that 80% more interest.
Honestly, working on and around the infotainment systems in modern cars is not as bad as I thought it would be. It just takes a different set of skills and knowledge than car guys are used to. I recently added android auto to my 10 year old car, which involved adding a circuit board that goes between the existing screen and it’s OEM circuit board.
Oh we have a Volvo S60 and it has a screen but the map app is so bad that we put our phone there while driving, but every time you go into reverse you can’t see the back driving camera. How does your retrofitted system teal with stuff like that?
Perfectly. The setup retains all stock functions.
I got it from these guys: https://www.gtacarkits.com/
I really want to gut my car’s infotainment system. I’m just worried about the resale value and whether or not part of this shit is somehow critical to the vehicle now.
Not like there’s any useful manuals on this shit out there. And the manufacturer is incentivized to actively thwart my efforts.
Retrofitting infotainment on your terms is entirely different from dealing with it preinstalled in a new car. For example, I’m betting yours doesn’t have an unskippable popup warning about paying attention to the road that you have to dismiss every time you turn on the car. Or telemetry that rats out your driving behavior to the manufacturer and/or the insurance company and/or law enforcement. Or other sorts of adware or malware.
And considering that you had to add it to begin with, it definitely doesn’t disable the entire car if you try to remove it or otherwise neuter the hostile misfeatures.
Especially when the software required to reprogram the modules costs thousands of dollars, if it’s even available at all.
“bad UI”
Especially that one!!!
There are certain things that should be buttons that don’t move. The hazard flashers, for instance.
They should not be an icon on the “dashboard” that goes away when you’re trying to change the temperature.
ditch the marxist leninism and you’ll have a whole new view on everything in the world
it’s a cult and it’s broken your brain
computers are still just computers and still do vast amounts of good
heard of linux?
Oh yeah Linux you know that technology built with Marxist Leninism principles is really great.
It is tech built by and for the people at no cost to them simply to make the computing world better for everyone.
Perhaps you should examine your own brain since you can’t comprehend the words you’re trying to use.
Capitalism: how much can you improve a fork? Let’s build society around that and see!
I still think computing is really interesting. The problem is the same as it ever was; a tool being hijacked and used by the owner class to subjugate the workers.
It feels like all the joy I used to feel from being [human] has been completely voided as [humanity] has become the modern vector for fascism and surveillance. I find myself recoiling from all [human] spaces, even [safe, supportive] ones that I’d loved and supported in the past.
I’m not trying to poke fun at you, but I found that we can really apply what you said there to a lot of other aspects of life and it wouldn’t sound too crazy these days.
Tools are tools. The car brings you from point A to point B. That point B can be your home where you feel safe, or right into some person to hurt or even kill them. The kitchen knife lets you cut your veges, but you can also cut off someone else’s finger. But do we say we should stop using these tools because of how badly other people are using them?
What you’re tired of is people being irresponsible, people wanting to act with impunity, to gain dangerous powers, to threaten others, to satisfy only themselves, be it sadistic, sexual, egotistic, self-compensation, or whatever. The problem lies in certain groups of people, not the tool. Why are we fussing over the tool when it’s the people that we need to deal with? Sure, we can argue that the tool makes doing the harm easier, and yes we should try to find ways to build better, safer tools, or control who gets to use the tools, but it never removes people’s abilities to do harm through other means. Not having the Internet and technology just means that these harms are more localized and muted. A tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, but it also means no one knows if someone’s actually there and they’re hurt because of it.
No you’re absolutely correct. I’ve found it harder to have faith in other people as much as I did when I was a little younger, because of the state of the world and the lack of movement on the part of people around me. I think part of the struggle I’m having is that computers aren’t a hobby one engages with in a vacuum. If someone was really into knitting and all of the sudden half the knitting community got into fascism for some reason, that person could reasonably go on knitting in the comfort of their own home without feeling like it is in any way contributing to or condoning those fascist knitters. But with computers, half the hobby is the joy of networking! Of these shared spaces created by tying computers together in new and interesting ways. Which unfortunately have now created a wicked gestalt surveillance apparatus. Hell is other people and their computers?
I get your sentiment, but I’ll use your argument against you here: just as computing as a hobby doesn’t exist in a vacuum, the enjoyment of any hobby doesn’t exist in one either. I get it if you’re feeling guilty by association — lots amongst us are likely feeling that way, and I started off thinking that way too, even if I, demonstrably, am not contributing to the enablement of that evil. The person knitting at home for leisure may get lumped with the fascist knitters. Their techniques at knitting up beautiful sweaters that they’ve shared is being used to make fascist uniforms, used as a symbol of repression. It’s disappointing, but it should not be reason for us to give up on this space we’ve created and allow these forces of evil to take up the whole space and allow the hobby, the technique, the tool, to truly and fully become monopolized by these forces. That evil isn’t going away by us staying quiet and just leaving the space; the tools are already there, and if we just passively shy away from pushing back, then the tools and narrative are theirs to control.
And all this is why it’s important for us to continue participating in the discourse, even if we don’t actively push back against that force. We show that normality exists, that not all the people in the space is some dickhead.
At least that’s what my optimistic side is telling me, and my pessimistic side wants to believe that we can actually do that so that I don’t just fine up on humanity entirely.
I’m still all in. It’s just getting harder to find good software. Most of it is older and starting to bit rot. My tolerance for digital BS is at an all-time low. Any sort of dark pattern from a website and I don’t hesitate to nope out.
We need actual human programmed things as alternative to the AI wastelands, so please keep at it.
Every time something you like sells out to AI, make a clone of it or find an AI free clone version already made.
