Technology is ruined and we should all pack up and return to the start of the Millennium and restart.

Early in the 2000s, I had my first experience with technology when I logged into a school computer to draw something meaningless on Microsoft Paint and write my first sentence on a Text Editor. I was ecstatic and amazed with the computer and that quickly grew into exploring the internet and programming.

Later in college, I was lucky to explore the old Nokia phones, the swankily designed Sony Walkman series, and my favorite gaming console-like device, the Nokia Ngage. I carried that phone with me throughout college and my early days working the corporate IT job.

As I became more corporate I got myself a Blackberry and then came the age of smartphones with Android phones and the Apple iPhones.

The Early Days of Smartphones

There was so much to explore during the early days of smartphones. I was initially an Android adopter and later moved to iPhone when I made enough money to afford one, well I can’t say I have still made enough.

When I did my research for a new smartphone, I looked at several things that fit my use case. Be it the speakers, the camera, the hardware, and of course the design, I meticulously looked at every aspect and made a decision to get a device that appealed to me.

Fast forward to the age of social media, I know I wanted to get a device with a good camera as I was interested in clicking pictures with my phone. I have always been an early adopter of technology and I was happy to use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share pictures and interact with communities. I know, so naive of me.

I enjoyed the advent of technology the choices that came with it and the chances to explore new devices. Then it all went downhill.

Social Media and the Culture of Monetization

As the communities grew, the big technology and even the consumers realized the opportunity to monetize the content created on social media, and with that, it felt like the entire technological landscape narrowed down to one thing - Content Creation.

Don’t get me wrong, the advancement in tech has been surreal to witness and it will continue to advance at a rate that is difficult to keep up with for me. One simple thing that continues to bother me though with all this advancement is a matter of Purpose.

It seems like new technology and devices released at a rapid pace lack a sense of purpose and direction. It has become more apparent with the push of AI from the companies that manufacture these devices.

I watched the Made with Google event and the Apple event of the past and maybe even the upcoming event by Apple will be cluttered with features and devices no one asked for or seems to solve problems none of us users are currently experiencing.

We need AI and We don’t even know it

If you have seen any events for the last year or so, there are hundreds of AI companies popping up telling us to use their AI which is better than the other AI at a task that none of us know we even wanted to accomplish.

Google announced the latest Pixel Pro with AI in the camera that generates images as you are clicking photos of your friends or things. It might also change the photo entirely to look like something else since that is the way we intend to use the camera, as per big tech.

I might sound very pragmatic and naive but the more the companies push us towards using AI, the more I realize that it rarely solves any actual real-world problems for a general purpose user like me.

I am tempted to look at the statistics of AI companies that spawned in the last year or two and how many are actually making money by solving problems for everyday users but maybe that is a topic for another post. The point is technology was supposed to enable our way of living or ease the complicated tasks in our everyday lives and is not meant to dictate the way we live our lives.

You are living your life wrong

How many times have we heard that joke about Apple telling the users that they are holding their phone wrong when the whole bend-gate issue or even the problems with their mics occurred causing users to flood Apple stores with replacements?

The big tech very much likes to tell us that the right way to live is the way they want us to live and to accomplish that we have to spend money on the technology they create so they can control different aspects of our lives.

Guess what, probably a lot of us are beginning to realize that we don’t want to attend meetings in the metaverse or have three kilograms worth of holographic spectacle on our eyes to accomplish our daily tasks. I, for sure, don’t want to subscribe to AI that is touting to replace me at my job that it probably learned from the data captured from my past work.

The technology, which includes both software and hardware, that has been released in the past year or two seems to be most detached from the everyday user. It seems to be the reflection of the people making these things, detached from the real world and devoid of any real human interaction.

Tech won’t save us, Why should we save Tech?

I will try to end this rant of a post in the most succinct way possible if I can.

Tech companies are trying to throw a lot of different things at us, the users, hoping that one of them sticks which saves them from themselves. Be it AI, AR/VR, Self-driving cars, or Talking AI Rabbits we as users need to understand that the way we want to live should be dictated by our needs and wants which can then be supplemented by the use of technology and not the other way round.

I will part with you by providing links to these two podcasts that I have been listening to for the past week or so -

While they might have some amazing insights into the world of technology and the way it operates, don’t mind some of the rants they have against the technology giants, somewhat similar to this post.