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The solution is the same as always: decentralized and build it small, local, redundant, and networks. That's what made the internet powerful in the first place, what made it good. Now, we can't even swap out our now phone batteries!
Jan 17, 2025
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currently a refugee from my own fucking house because the google nest thermostat that was installed against our wishes *ran out of battery* (even though it's a fucking wall-mounted device???) and it just reminded me that almost every piece of consumer hardware made since 2012 has been complete dogshit and they would literally be more valuable to society if they were all melted down and upcycled into an abstract art project
Oct 1, 2024
i'm always getting too bleak about technology and AI, about the brain rot and disassociation and spiraling out and general cognitive decline we're all experiencing, that will only continue to worsen with time. but this essay gave me some hope
“Do you see a way out?”
“Yeah, I mean . . . I’m not in the business of saving the world, but it would definitely be a better and more interesting place if more people were involved in making these things. That’s the fundamental thing: that if more software, more buildings, more social spaces, and more everything were designed by more people, of course it would produce a more interesting and better world! ...One of Stafford Beer’s more famous and brilliant phrases was ‘POSIWID,’ which stands for ‘the purpose of the system is what it does.’ It’s a kind of maxim of cybernetics. And it’s very good for diagnosing systems. Instead of saying, Oh, we have a democratic system, we have an education system, you say, The purpose of the system is what it does. And what our society produces is people who are undereducated, or just educated enough to perform specific tasks—the way to get a good education is to study something that has this high economic value. Apart from that, you are pretty fucked. The purpose of the system is to reproduce the existing power dynamics of that system again and again. That is what it does. Society has no interest in educating you in how technology works. Because then you make your own technology, and you make different technology, and you upset the economic power balance and so forth. But it is doable, and people are doing it all the time. You can do it yourself.”
May 30, 2025
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there is lowkey an unbelievable crisis in tech literacy atm, and working on the projects that i have over the last year has driven that home for me like nothing else. once upon a time, understanding how a computer worked was a precondition for using one. it isn’t anymore, and that is so unimaginably dangerous.
the total helplessness i’ve seen (some) people express in response to tech’s recent rightward turn has been deeply unmooring. i see people all the time who genuinely do not understand how the platforms and devices that *govern their entire lives* operate on a basic level. “the kids” didn’t become computer wizards - instead, the devices got good enough that they could abstract all of their actual functionality away from you.
the amount of power and control knowing even a little bit about digital technology can give you is immense. learn about http. learn about rss. learn about how servers operate. learn the absolute basics of programming. far dumber people than you are doing it every day in silicon valley, and they (and their bosses) are using those skills against you.
Jan 28, 2025
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Jan 20, 2025