This post is just a brief update about where I’ve arrived at in life and how I’ve been navigating an increasingly turbulent world. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how I’m interacting with and using computing technology in my everyday life now.

I haven’t written any updates since 2020 and I could trot out a litany of excuses for why this is so, but ultimately the core reason for not posting is that I’ve become fantastically jaded with the level of discourse that the present web mediates, and I just haven’t wanted to contribute to the morass of misinformation and half-baked thoughts that Web 2.0 has given rise to. Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the emotional rollercoaster of the 2024 election cycle helped prod me towards my current state of mind, but I also am convinced that even without these events I would have become disillusioned with the contemporary web. This is partially because my values have changed as I’ve aged, and partially because the web itself has changed as it has become more and more commercialized.

Within this context, I can reduce how I relate to technology to the following interrelated values:

• Privacy
• Discretion
• Minimalism
• Mindfulness / self-awareness

Privacy

privacyguides.org has a good overview of why individuals should value privacy and I don’t want to repeat what they’ve already said with less eloquence. For me personally the issue is less about what I’m doing and more just that I’m exhausted by the constant attempts by large corporations to manipulate my behavior using data that they’ve gathered about me online. Having to fend off constant attempts to condition me one way or the other creates a ton of cognitive load, and the path of least resistance without sacrificing individual autonomy seems to just be to opt out of services that employ trackers.

Just to reiterate, I’m less concerned about government spying agencies like the NSA and more just vexed by the monsoon of obnoxious marketing that I receive on a regular basis. If the NSA wants to spy on me, they’re welcome to do so, and I don’t think that I realistically would have the means to stop them anyways. But I think that it is incredibly unlikely that any 3 letter agency really would want to do that; I’m not so egotistical to think that I’m really so important that I’m on the federal government’s radar. It’s also worth bearing in mind that I live in NYC, where low levels of privacy are a fact of life. Even with that daily reality, I still feel like the advertisers, marketers, and large corporations have gone too far on the web.

Discretion

One of the biggest issues that I have with social media and Web 2.0 (aside from the fact that companies like Meta are actively attempting to weaponize psychological manipulation methods to direct consumer behavior) is that it is too easy to blurt out the first thought that comes to mind when writing a comment. Participants in online forums will gleefully vomit out all sorts of nonsense for a quick dopamine hit that comes from a false sense of satisfaction that the immediacy of a comment box gives you.

But do we really need to give our opinions on every single funny video we see online or every single news story? I’m certainly not in favor of censorship, but does every single conceivable shower thought really need to sit next to a video of a cat playing the banjo?

As I’ve grown older I’ve come to value the ability to delay expressing thoughts because:

• Not everyone needs to know every trivial observation that passes through one’s head on a daily basis. People who post and comment too much are actively driving up the noise and drowning out the signal of good, well-considered thoughts.
• Thoughts are like wine- they ferment. If you can just stop and wait before you say something and mull it over for a while, the idea that you’re trying to express will ultimately be more well-considered and stronger.
• Expressing thoughts carelessly online often leads to long, circular debates that wind up being a massive waste of time and a drain on everyone’s mental resources. On the web especially, you don’t know much about who your peers are, and if you actually are knowledgeable about a topic but no one else is, there’s a good chance you’ll get dogpiled on by non-experts (see also: bikeshedding) who have persuaded themselves that they are experts (the web uniquely seems to promote this kind of self-deception due to the ease of use of search engines).
• Relatedly, the modern web seems to have created a systematic devaluing of expertise (e.g., Dr Google). People are relying more and more on online comments with shoddy or wrong information to solve serious real-world problems, and this is having serious impacts on the general well-being of society. I find it hard to fathom why people would think that someone who is truly knowledgeable about a complex topic would spend their spare time giving away free labor to a stranger. Developing a skill or developing know-how takes a huge investment in time and energy, and the most reliable way to get accurate and/or good results is to work with a doctor, lawyer, or engineer in the real world.

Nowadays, I’ve decided that if I’m passionate enough about an issue to write about it, I should jot something down in a note-keeping application like Joplin instead of impulsively commenting. If I have a thought that I really feel is worth sharing with the entire English-speaking world, and if I feel that it’s well-formed, it’s always possible to convert a note into a blog post or a comment. As a corollary, I don’t think I’ll ever put a comments section on my blog because I have no desire to moderate.

Minimalism

Currently, I’ve come to see computing devices like smartphones as less of an asset and more of a liability, simply because of how intrusive they’ve become. Of course, what constitutes a minimal vs maximal setup resides in the eye of the beholder, but in general I’ve found that lumping a large number of tools into one device (smartphone) not only creates a single point of failure (bad from an engineering perspective) but also makes it difficult to concentrate since multiple functions may be trying to compete for your attention at the same time (e.g., you start to add an appointment to your calendar but then an Instagram notification pops up; bad from a human factors standpoint).

For the past year or so, I’ve been splitting out functionality that used to be concentrated in my smartphone into multiple devices. I now use a feature phone, dictaphone, paper agenda, and YubiKey for functions that used to all be part of my smartphone. I still have a smartphone for a few select applications (e.g., Camera, Signal/texting, eBird) that I feel that I truly benefit from, but this smartphone doesn’t have a data plan and can only connect to the internet via wifi (I use mobile hotspot when I’m in motion). I believe that this has increased my focus and well-being, in large part because I now feel much less phone anxiety- I frequently will leave my smartphone on a desk and walk away for hours at a time without any qualms.

I’ve noticed that other tech professionals in my social circle have taken similar measures, with at least one individual dumbing down his/her/their smartphone using an application and buying an old-school digital watch from the 80s to separate time-keeping functionality from telecommunications functionality.

For a more detailed treatment of this sort of attitude toward technology, I’d recommend taking a look at Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism (ISBN13: 9780525536512). It’s a flawed book (chiefly because it focuses too much on the FI/RE movement, which I feel is logically and morally problematic) but it conveys the gist of how I feel.

My adoption of digital minimalism can be seen in this site, which I have downgraded to an early web compatible pure hypertext site. Another major motivation for this early 90s aesthetic was that I grew sick of receiving constant Github Dependabot alerts for compromised Javascript dependencies, and I wanted to just maintain a site for writing (not for casual firefighting). By switching to a hypertext-only static site I not only removed a relentless onslaught of automated emails, I also improved the security posture of this site and brought it to a level that I can cope with in my spare time (in addition to my hobbies).

Mindfulness

I’ve come to strongly believe that just because you can do something with a computer doesn’t mean that you should. In many cases, a computer is a well-principled solution and should be applied judiciously to a task. In other cases involving computation (including artificial intelligence) just amounts to thoughtless techno-solutionism. From my vantage point, it makes the most sense to use technology when it confers an advantage, and reject it when it is actively harmful. Anecdotally, this ability to discriminate between technology as an advantage and technology as an artificial obstacle has become increasingly rare in the era of Web 2.0 / Web 3.0.

Alright, that’s all for now folks. See you later (maybe in another 2 years).