This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm for it. Tbh I would rather more people opt out of modern tech then try and fail to become ethically engaged in it.
Of course ethical engagement (like the fediverse, self hosting, using opensource, contributing to opensource, supporting community controlled tech projects, etc) is better than that but the harm reduction of addiction, survelince, etc tech is still way better imho
I hope its all busted or out of date stuff to begin with otherwise its as stupid as the book burning.
I would have never guessed the iPad babies would turn on their cyber nannies. Good on you, kiddos.
misguided. people should be against corporations as they are the ones who make technology a problem.
As an IT person I get it.
Especially printers.
Fuck yes. Especially printers.
But my IT guy advice on the matter is this: ink jet is a scam, don't buy one, ever; don't accept one for free. If you print a lot, get a laser printer for home, if you only print a few times a year, get a laser printer for home.
Appstinence is just one of a seemingly growing constellation of groups, mostly led by young people, advocating for reduced reliance on technology, either for one's own mental health or as a protest against powerful tech companies that have an ever-growing hold on all aspects of our lives.
I'ma be real with you. Choosing to dump technology entirely instead of learning to use it responsibly and finding things that aren't dominated by corporations looking to control us seems really short sighted and leaning into false promise of things being different at best.
It's quite like the whole Climate Change movement and how we won't do anything to constrain giant corporations or billionaires in how they impact the planet, but instead individuals (often poverty stricken) are expected to shoulder the burden through recycling programs that don't even end up recycling what those individuals take the time to sort.
It's also eerily similar to the anti-AI movement which focuses on all the most negative aspects of AI generation, ignores the benefits of locally-hosted models as opposed to giant models owned by corporations run out of energy and water hogging data-centers, and similarly ignores that the AI that consistently is a failure is general purpose AI whereas highly specialized AI is often very successful. I am by no means an AI lover, I don't use it at all in my every day life, but I think it's foolhardy to write it off entirely instead of making regulations that prevent this kind of environment-destroying investment in endless data centers for profit. Much like the Climate Change issue, it's the smallest and weakest among us shouldering the burden, making our own lives harder, while nothing materially changes and AI advances anyway.
These modern Luddites are not wrong that some aspects of the modern era are terrible, but some of the things they decry are the same things that are so beautiful about it. When I was a young person, finding LGBTQ+ or atheist groups was basically impossible without the internet. As someone who grew up in a relatively rural area, it was hard to make friends and connections even in a mostly unconnected world (I am in my forties, for reference, so I grew up in the era of CompuServe and AOL being the only "online" options). Having the internet suddenly opened me up to finding people who I could actually be open and vulnerable with, something I couldn't say was true about most of my IRL peers at the time. Returning to that, especially at a period where Christofascism is taking hold, is asking to let the Christofascists dictate how society looks and functions and removing those footholds of access for people who are queer or atheist or disabled. It returns us to an unconnected world where people suffer in silence for decades not knowing that there is nothing wrong with who they are deep down as they are regularly shamed and abused by their IRL peers for not appearing or acting the "right" way.
Especially with the likelihood of modern communication methods being clamped down upon, embracing the technology and finding ways to use it to benefit humankind instead of deciding it's all evil is the way forward. The world was, for example, a better place with Fred Rogers in it, who leveraged the technology of television, often villainized as terrible for children, as a way to connect with children and educate them in a healthy, humane, and loving way. I see shades of that type of villainization in this movement, equating screen time with being unhealthy.
All tools are able to be misused. All tools are able to be used positively. It's all in who is using those tools and what their aims and intents are. A hammer can be used to both create and destroy in positive ways in the trade of construction. A hammer can also be wielded as a violent, dangerous weapon. It all depends on whose hands it is in, and what they aim to use that tool for.
Dropping technology instead of standing for using it in positive ways will always be tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Yeah I think the focus should be on technological sovereignty, not abstinence. We need control over our data, control over our software, control over our devices, control over our hardware, and through these things we can gain control over our lives while still accessing these extremely useful tools. We need our own search engines, our own operating systems, our own applications, our own email, our own social media, our own video hosting, etc etc. We can never go back, the only way out is through.
This is extremely hard and expensive, though. It'll require mass organization of millions of people, we can't do it as individuals.
As another LGBT person who grew up during the advent of the internet and learned that there were words for things I had felt for years thanks to the internet (despite living in a very liberal area), I completely agree with both of you.
However, I want to make one counterpoint that reframes these movements to where I think these people are coming from: People like us here on Lemmy, who are aware of FOSS projects and the like are a minority group.
I see these groups as a reaction based on the belief that you either have to deal with the corporations or give it up entirely because nobody else can offer what they do, and the corporations need us a lot more than we need them. They're effectively a general strike against the nightmare of corporate walled gardens that the internet at large has become in order to force a correction in the ecosystem, and I think if these groups were made aware of the alternatives out there, we'd probably see a large swing in adoption.
This is why I think we need to get organized. There are these spontaneous masses of people who would be very receptive to libreware and federation, but the message isn't getting out to them. You have to be a turbonerd to even be aware of this stuff, but the outrage is fertile ground if the message could just get out of obscure corners of the internet.
The newer generation of tech users know only of a narrow subset of technology from big tech / ad tech. They know little of anything at all the grassroots era of technology.
I'm a fan of taking back control over my tech, not giving up control. They're treating it like there's no other option.
If you listen between the lines we are given by tech companies, right now there is no other option.
Its hard to believe that someone would be aware enough to go to something like this, while not being aware of the existence of alternative solutions that give you more control. But these people do definitely exist. At the same time i think that this group of people is probably quite diverse with some being complete hardliners that want zero tech while others are just against the kind that is extremely damaging to society and the world.
I dunno.
Multiple people in my friend group are aware of the issues with big tech companies.
But the second you bring up FOSS with them, or Linux gets mentioned, they either disengage completely or get angry. One of these people heads an IT department.
I don't know why they react that way. The weird part is, they'll happily use FOSS software like VLC or something Minecraft launcher. The second you say it's FOSS they actually seem less into the software, not more.
Neoluddites 💅
Heres everyone’s daily reminder that the luddites were not anti-technology.
They were the high-skilled tech workers of their time! They were concerned with the power and wealth concentration that came with industrialists that used automation and abused low skilled labour to make obscene profits. They even proposed plans to phase in the new tech in a humane way before turning to the (ultimately failure of a) strategy to target and destroy specific machines.
Groups like the EFF and tech labour unions have more of a connection with the luddites than people who get together the bust their own iphones.
For every second you have your headphones in on the train, you're not talking to anybody and you're not taking in the world. For every one of those seconds, how much of your life do you let pass by?" one man asked.
Lmao what the fuck
Its a call to be present.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wearing headphones on the train, but ask yourself why you're doing it.
If you put on Headphones to keep people from talking to you, you're making the choice to opt out of the human experience.?Make that choice every day on a 45 minute commute and after only a week 7.5 hours where you've opted out of chance encounter, conversation, possibly meeting a new friend or partner. It might not be a bad idea to make the choice to NOT disconnect, actively choosing to engage in the world around us makes a huge difference in how we percieve it, and how it percieves us.
An experiment I'd suggest, if you're the type to default to using your phone as an idle activity:
Next time you're idle and get the urge to pull out your phone, instead look around you and find the most interesting thing you can see. Why is it interesting? Is there anything abnormal about it? Is it's place significant? Take that and note it in your mind, have a conversation with a coworker about it later. Then take note, how did this pointless conversation make me feel?
Being present by choice, especially if done often, will create chances to engage with the World, and its inhabitants.
The other day someone told me life was boring. Put the phone down, make more than the 2 meter cone you can see from around your phone visible, and you'll find the World has a lot of engagement to offer.
I don't any randos talking to me on the train. Commute is worse enough without people trying to "connect with me" during it.
Well I consider talking to strangers in public a waste of time, so what now?
Tech is good Uber rich tech bros is bad
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater because they think all tech is is walled gardens on toy hardware. Sad. We failed the next generation.
I might be one of the few in this thread who really empathizes with the perspectives of the protesters here
I'm not in a position to cut tech out of my life, but for people who are and dont need or depend on it for something important, it may do a lot of harm for little benefit.
But whether there's important benefit will vary from person to person. I have a very isolating sleep disorder, and the internet allows me a little bit more connection than I would get otherwise. And home automation helps shoulder some of the load of managing environmental variables that impact my sleep. And there are also technological things that bring me joy.
But not everyone is in a position where their only connection to others is through the internet (if you're queer in a small town, maybe it is, if you're queer in a big city or you're straight that probably isn't an issue)
There are ofcourse benefits to technology, some of which you can better access through FOSS software, or community projects, or self hosting. But not everyone needs those things, and even those things can have harmful downsides. I think the hyper convenience that much of tech provides is not exactly great for us. Even the fediverse platforms can be addicting, can prioritize stuff that makes you angry, etc, because they copy the underlying design of proprietary social media (even without recommendation algorithms). I struggle to manage how much time I spend engaging with these platforms. Not as much as with reddit, but I still do, and am now creating structure around engaging more in moderation.
I don't love creating e-waste though. I get that it's symbolic, I still think it's wasteful and has no meaningful upsides. It feels deeply privileged to not grasp how that could be a lifeline for poor people who need a way to connect, keep up with work, handle digital tasks like banking and telemedicine, etc, and to smash it on the ground instead of donating it to someone who couldn't afford a reliable device.
I have no idea what smashing perfectly functional devices is supposed to accomplish. I mean yeah, it's an anti-tech rally, but creating e-waste is kinda shitty.
Actually, I don't think I get the point of this whole thing at all. They're not rallying against climate change or fascism, it's just "phone bad". I guess I'm just too old to get it...
