From their section 'The Master Plan':
Today, we are seeing unprecedented labor shortages. There are over 10 million unsafe or undesirable jobs in the U.S. alone, and an aging population will only make it increasingly difficult for companies to scale their workforces. As a result, the labor supply growth is set to flatline this century. If we want continued growth, we need more productivity — and this means more automation.
To be clear, I would have been fascinated by this a few decades ago (maybe). Now, the key phrase is, as usual, if we want continued growth. There is zero nobility in any of this, especially if it comes from the ultra-capitalist part of the Western world.
Growth at all cost, productivity at all cost, more automation to avoid the human element. Again, it would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that all this is built to simply accumulate more wealth at the expenses of others, in a neverending destructive cycle.
What would more automation solve? How do you face the ever increasing number of unemployed people in the immediate future? More growth and more productivity without a real vision of a just society is yet more empty bullshit.
Similarly to when, in my former country of Italy, the success of Silvio Berlusconi as a "politician" was interconnected with how well the companies he owned were performing and vice versa1, I've been adjusting my position following the worsening of my mental health within a faltering socio-political situation.
Until recently.
It finally dawned on me that I've been foolishly comparing my expectations with a bygone era, without realising the close connection between a degrading quality of modern technology and the objective descent of Western societies towards something that can only be defined with the term fascism.
It's been a steady progression, started with leaving mainstream social media, quitting certain services, decoupling things that I had learned to think as inextricably interconnected. It's been at the same time a liberating thought process, and enjoyable practical steps.
In a nutshell, I found myself trapped within a kind of self-inflicted jail, where the warden was a collective entity made of rich white men. These mercurial figures come from a foreign country that I was conditioned to think as an ally.
It is not.
I might be living in a capitalist society, but whatever my political creed might be, Europe is an objectively different place. This late realisation made me connect all the dots, so now I can finally see the end of the road. I wrote this on Mastodon recently:
It's true that ageing brings a different perspective. Years ago I was an early adopter. Then I slowly moved towards caution, and now I'm much happier with old tech. There's nothing — NOTHING — that I find attractive in today's offering.
The only events that interest me are connected to companies that are betting on repairability, respect for the environment, respect for their employees.
Everything else can simply go away, I'm educating myself to developing a complete blindness to other brands.
When a couple of people rightly noticed that maybe the culprit is a dire situation of the tech world, I felt in a different position. Yes, we agree—however, my real discomfort is with a concept that's been ingrained in most of us, no matter which generation. This marketing-friendly idea that tech-as-a-service, coupled with a society restructured so that we all must be always present, always ready, always reactive, made our lives convenient.
There is nothing convenient, it's all such an easy to see trap, I wonder why it has taken me so long. I then wrote another bit on Mastodon:
I despise the age of "24/7 connected and ready", so I made my devices islands.
Having all my tech interconnected was yet another source of ridiculous anxiety.
I rediscovered the beauty and power of PAPER, for starters. Then, not all phones need to be 'smart', they can function well doing a couple of things and doing them well.
My digital life doesn't need to follow me everywhere, if I'm out and about, I don't care about having digital journals or bank accounts in my pocket.
So, while I've been saying how I'm projected towards repairable and long-lasting tech, it dawned on me: there is no need for me to buy a Framework computer or a Fairphone. Not now at least. It can happen in a year or in ten years for all I know, because the real meat is in this simple solution: the old tech I'm using works perfectly well, so I'll keep using it for the foreseeable future.
My naive position of standing by these companies neglects a simpler and powerful principle: re-use, repair, recycle. That is why I couldn't care less of whatever bullshit fake new product these big waste of people and environment can put out. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, whichever of these dinosaurs can think of. It's all pointless fluff. It's polluting everyone, and it's making Western society a shit place.
Then—of course—fascism. But that's for another time, because my former country invented it, and it still feels difficult to speak about it. Especially after they put Mussolini's grandchildren in power again, a mere century later.
Berlusconi won general elections in close proximity to when his football team—A.C. Milan—won either the national title or the Champions League. ↩
While I'm in a slow process of erasing Google from my life (Android has been de-googled but PeerTube hasn't been setup yet—hence the wait), here is a quick and dry list of accounts that I have deleted so far:
I might be forgetting some of them. Note that I have never had an account on either SnapChat or Tik Tok.
I don't use any application for social media (Mastodon, in my case), preferring a browser instead. Only phone, messages and calendar have a permission to send notifications on any of my devices.
I call, I message, I write emails, sometimes I meet them in person and have real discussions without taking my phone out of any pocket or bag.