Is “digital amish” meant to be a pejorative of some sort?
They say it like it’s a bad thing?
Yeah it’s not really a bad thing if you’re about it. Religious aspects aside the (general, it varies) Amish approach to technology is that each thing is looked at very intentionally with community integrity in mind. Instead of everything for everyone, technology is considered a tool.
Most people don’t get cell phones to scroll tik tok slop, but they might let a business owner have one with a limited plan for planning jobs for their business.
Most people don’t get cars because they encourage people to live farther apart and are expensive, but they might allow solar charged e-scooters
I guess if you consider the word “Amish” to be negative? I mean I despise Amish because of how they treat their animals, but I don’t consider it negative. I’d assume most people don’t.
I take it as a “fixed” reference. Many people know the Amish community hit a point and chose not to use new technology created after that.
They are not against it, or others using it.
I don’t interpret the phrase as having malace, just a way to show this might be the new line in the sand.
Amish 2.0 ?
My current phone is an iPhone 12 mini. Am happy multiple companies, commodore, clicks etc are working on more limited phones. It all takes too much out of a day.
Also, I want my electronics to have buttons. Not screens.
I want my electronics to have buttons. Not screens.
Could you elaborate? Do you miss tackle controls so much you’d rather have that vs screen space, or you genuinely don’t want a bigger screen?
Cooking plates come with (janky) touch panels instead of physical buttons, my laundry machine too.
Also actual feel of good buttons on for example amplifiers etc actually is a nice feel. Also buttons are replaceable if broken.
Generally if no screen is needed (fridge) it can just go.
Also a screen should be if it’s there dumb. Eg a TV should not come with an OS that will serve me shitty apps and advertisements.
Buttons and the aux hole.
I don’t know why everyone just accepted that we don’t get those things anymore.
I hate cordless earphones, I doesn’t make any sense at all.
It all takes too much out of a day.
What does this even mean
Lemmy
- Developer: LemmyNet
- Initial release: May 5, 2019
Whew, we’re safe guys
Some people also refuse to interact with venomous snakes, for the same reason.
They’re Luddites 2.0.
Hasan Minhaj had an interview with the “Gen Z Luddite” movement
https://player.fm/series/hasan-minhaj-doesnt-know/the-gen-z-luddites-rebelling-against-big-tech
Daily reminder of Luddites demands and the realization they were not against technology, just being exploited by it.
Wage cuts- Employees were fighting for their (economic) survival as wages sank while food prices were skyrocketing. They used collective bargaining to demand higher wages.
Price cuts - Textile goods were becoming cheaper, reducing the value created by highly-skilled textile workers. They asked local magistrates to enforce price limits.
Deskilling - As their work was being replaced by low-skill labour they asked employers to protect their jobs during trade depressions.
Quality standards - They opposed the production of cheap, shoddy goods that undercut the market for quality textiles and degraded their trade. They asked the government to enforce quality standards in textile production.
Breaking traditional labour practices - Employers were abandoning apprenticeship systems and customary agreements about wages and working conditions. They advocated for the prosecution of employers who violated these norms.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Luddites/
Some of them. The rest just hated the textile machinery, and thought it was plagiarizing their week.
This is not true, they did not hate the machines. Please stop spreading misinformation about their movement. They negotiated because they had a place at the table. It was only after they had exhausted every avenue that they turned to destruction.
They can call themselves luddites when they start blowing up data centers.
Ned Ludd didn’t fuck around and neither should we.
I’m not going totally “Amish”, but I’ve become a cranky bitch about technology nowadays. I was very passionate about tech throughout my teens and early twenties. Since then, I’ve watched every major tech company go to shit. Services I used forever go to shit or die. Companies harvest more and more of our data in creepier and more invasive ways. They went from “don’t be evil” and creating interesting new tech or shaking up an industry (Google fiber, for instance) to doing anything as long as it saves a dollar.
The only thing giving me any hope or interest in this space is FOSS and hosting things myself. It was confusing to me at first and still is in some ways, but not only can I solve my own issues, I can offer a lot of it to my friends and family. Having 10 different streaming services and finding where a show is within them is expensive and annoying, but I’m enjoying managing a library and hosting it on jellyfin. Then I can tell a few people, hey get jellyfin and type in this url, I’ll find whatever you want. I recently setup seerr so now they don’t have to feel like they’re bothering me when they want something, they can just request it (and see what’s new, upcoming, where something already is streaming if they already have that service, ratings, etc). Yeah it doesn’t support the show or movie but it’s a much more enjoyable experience. I stopped paying for Google drive and have all my pictures and videos (which is what used up all that space) syncing right to my PC, which then backs up to jotta cloud (not foss). I got off windows entirely (except at work) and use Linux now. I’m probably going to setup nextcloud and get a few people on there soon, since i have the space and it’ll save them a subscription.
I used to really push FOSS. I’ve run Linux since the late 90s. But I don’t know that I really believe it’s that much better anymore. I guess I kinda feel about the same as I do “organic” farming… It’s just not worth the price, effort, etc
I like that DDG lets you put date perameters on searches. Usually when looking for reciepies, I seach only from 1998-2016.
lemme get some of that sweet old internet
What is annoying is that it doesn’t accept it inline unlike StartPage and Google:
hazelnut pancake before:2017. This means I have to click on the selector and write 02-01-1970 (01-01 breaks it) > 01-01-2017 each time.yeah, I get that. Its better than nothing though. Minor annoyances like that, are just that, minor. Of course I dont know the coding, or how simple the fix might be, like you do
I… usually do 01-01-1998 and 01-01-2016 (the dates ive chosen have no real meaning). What do you mean 01-01 breaks it? Seems to work for me on ddg. I do get results thst were initially published in say, 2009, but the last update will be marked 2025 or somthing, which is fine, and not what I think you mean by breaks it.
Ill try 02-01, and see if I notice a difference in results
Fr?! Cheat code!
I grew up with nearly every stage and major leap of our modern tech. I saw dialup internet and windows 95 and the major shift to XP. I had an original Nintendo and gameboy, and got to witness the evolution to handheld and 3D gaming. I had a flip phone with T9 texting, and saw the first smartphones come about. For me, tech peaked in like 2012, and hasn’t done anything worthwhile or innovative since, with the exception of the steamdeck. The internet has only gotten shittier since, cell phones and PCs have only gotten more expensive and complex, without any major increase in capability. Sure they’re more powerful, but they can’t really do anything new, and all software has only gotten shittier and less efficient. It’s honestly depressing to think about how much hope I had for the tech space in the 2000s and how far we’ve fallen since then.
I’m not going digital Amish, but I’m trying my best not to let tech oligarchs hoard wealth that they can use to pursue their take on techno feudalism.
Most things could be nice if they were done environment consciously with something else than profit-oriented data harvesting in mind: social networks, LLMs, even smart glasses.
I draw the line at 2000.
You just broke your promise :/
Ssshh… don’t tell my other personality.
It’s not all tech. Just the shitty tech like AI or that benefits shitty people.
Idk framework 16 seems pretty nice
Everything modern I buy just breaks in a year
Everything modern also says you don’t own it, only lease access that can be revoked at any time, and also serves you tons of ads while listening to and spying on everything you do.
But anytime anyone says anything unkind towards the god of technology, they are amish, luddites, fools, etc.
people are saying its because of AI, but its actually because they refuse to get any information regarding technoblades death
I think you meant to say “people are saying it’s because of slop” - no sane person that I know refusing to work with this shit is dumb enough to call it “AI”
slop is often used to refer to things that were not made using generative AI
but yeah, AI is the wrong term
Fair enough, I only started reading the term when it was used to express disdain for machine learning systems being wrongly marketed as “AI”
they are AI though
how would it be wrong marketing?
they are AI though
see - when they sell statistical gibberish generators as “AI”, gullible people will believe it. You just proved my point.
they are selling statistical gibberish generators as AI because AI is a very broad term that includes machine learning
Only by the definition of people who try to sell this bullshit.
I end up scare-quotes a lot in text and saying “so-called AI” when speaking.
I sometimes use just the quotes for brevity, but I mostly use “slop”. I hate the implicit suggestion there’s any kind of intelligence/understanding involved in generating the output. That combined with the admittedly impressive looking/sounding results leads people to believe it’s actually accurate & reliable, which it isn’t.
I think that it’s not that people refuse to use new tech, I think it’s more that most of what is coming out is just worse in terms of usability and functionality in a lot of ways. Not so much a rejection of innovation, but a rejection of the priorities that major industry players have decided on. Like, “improvement” is relative, and what people care about isn’t being improved or actively being regressed.
They’re making bad products, and people don’t want them.
I am so overwhelmed by the visual clutter of Win 11 and the bizarre choices MS made. It’s like every time I want to do something fairly basic I have to relearn everything.
100% confirm.
I’m driving a rented car for work this week. It’s a 2025 Chevy Traverse. Not a single engineer was involved in making this car. It’s one of the worst cars I think I’ve ever driven.
The gear shift is on the steering wheel where the windshield wiper control arm would be normally.
Shifting requires pulling in that bar and then moving it up or down. To put it in Park, you press a button on the tip of it.
The parking break is also a button. But it doesn’t work unless the car engine is on. The car engine turns on by also pushing a button.
Windshield wipers? Button press. Windshield wipers plus cleaning fluid? Same button, but press it harder.
You want to adjust the treble or bass of the music you’re listening to? You can ONLY do that when the Radio is on. Then turn it off. Then switch to Spotify, etc for added Bass.
Near collision detection? It’s got the normal lights that light up. But it ALSO has a rumble pack in the driver’s chair that vibrates the left or right side of your balls if something is near that side of the car. How near? Someone walking by it on the sidewalk triggered it when I was at a stop sign, and literally jostled my nuts for 20 seconds.
This car literally sexually assaults you during near collisions.
Which I guess might be great if you’re suicidal and want to nut while almost dying.










