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Thoughts on the Digital World
June 22nd, 2021
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This is a brain dump. The following contains a stream of consciousness that I just wanted to get out but it's not in any coherent form. I've been thinking about what you're about to read for a long time but I haven't put the words down yet. I'm hoping this provides for catharsis.

I thought computers would always be an integral part of my life
I use them every day
I made my livelihood using computers with my beginnings as a precocious teenager
For over a quarter of a century

The Internet was my source of information and entertainment
I always saw it as the greatest invention
A tool connecting all of us together
The world would be better for it

Now I'm not so sure
In its current form, I'm using the Internet less and less. It's not a happy place. It's a source of "what could have been" in my mind.
There's a reason I'm posting this on gopher.

As a source of information, I still use the web as a reference book. I look-up many things, but less and less often. I'm losing interest in trying to navigate the cesspools of ads and adware, malvertising, tracking and popups, affiliate links, outrage, and reactionary writing. I don't want to wade through any of it.
As a source of news, I'm completely disillusioned. I want to be informed, but one can't keep up with the state-of-the-world on a minute-by-minute basis.
As a source of audio/video content, I've almost abandoned all the usual spaces--e.g. YouTube.
As a source of socializing, commercial social media is the worst.
As a source of entertainment, I've given up on video and music services, I don't play online games anymore, I barely play computer games--they've lost their appeal.
As a source of goods, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated. I just want to buy specific things through the web. I don't want to be tracked while doing so, I don't want to solve puzzles to prove I'm human--just take my money.

I've been an avid digital photographer for the past 2 decades. I've lost interest and rarely shoot nowadays and I'm considering going back to film.

Until I reinstalled my Mac with Linux, I would sometimes open tcpdump and watch the traffic go by. The constant phoning home, checking in, transmitting "telemetry", telling me what I can and can't do with my computer. I don't want a computer like this. I can't bring myself to run Apple or Microsoft products because of this.

There are a few spaces online that give me hope, that aren't invaded and interrupted by adware, greed, malvertising, and the cesspool that has become large swaths of the web, and I am grateful. Gopher and IRC, a few dozen websites I still visit regularly or subscribe to via RSS. I don't want to venture beyond that. I don't want to just consume what I read or hear or see, I want to reflect on it as well. The internet and its feeds aren't conducive to that essence of life.

I don't want to subject my kids to it either. This is getting increasingly hard to avoid. Every little-league team, community activity, and even getting vaccinated, requires agreeing to a privacy policy because of the third party software and services used to run them are operated by foreign corporations. Many which clearly state in their policies that the data is used for marketing, or it's sold, and it's used to build profiles that go beyond their specific use.

I think that a computer programmer developing an aversion for computers is not generally a good thing.
I consider my "career" at the moment to be that of a homemaker parent. My secondary job, is that of a part-time computer professional.

I'm happier when I disconnect from the computer, disconnect from the internet, read paper books, work with hand tools, spend time in the forests, in the marshes and fields, running, biking, hiking, swimming, jumping, exploring, connecting with people one-on-one, writing letters, sending postcards.

The value of the ephemeral computer information is fleeting and vanishing for me. The value of the tangible and tactile is awakening in me and I don't want to exchange the real time I have in this world for the virtual. I have to see the use of a computer as a means to an end, with a result and benefit and objective translating into what I do with my living senses, and not as a reality in it's own right -- "We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam."