Category: technology

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On Portability

We have a Nintendo Switch, so obviously we also have a subscription to whatever their service is (ugh – another damned subscription to cancel). Therefore, I am on their mailing list.

Last week I got an email with the subject line “Bring your games with you, anywhere you go”, and the attached image…

After spending a lot of time thinking about current and future technology use, the way online activity interferes with concentrating on more valuable activities (like reading, writing, skateboarding, the list goes on), I couldn’t help be think when I saw this email “Why is it good that people can take video games with them anywhere? Is it good? Is it desireable?”

Like the cursed cellphone, I think this kind of thing isn’t really good. I know it sounds like I just don’t like video games, and that is partially true. I’m not into them really, so I don’t really value them much. I understand, however, that they are entertainment and people like them so I’m not voicing this opinion just to crap on someone else’s fun.

A book is portable too. Why do I view that differently? Well, I think reading is a better thing to do when I’m sitting in a waiting room than playing a video game. Making video games portable is an example of what my niece calls “the Poison of Convenience.” It’s also a way of keeping people jacked-into the content machine and reinforcing the digital addition. It’s not even a conspiracy. It’s just Capitalism doing what Capitalism does, extracting value from the humans and nature.

The same goes for the damned cellphone. Harvesting your attention and the irreplaceable and valuable moments of your life to sell another product.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t play video games. I think video games can be amazing and fun entertainment. I’m talking about our ability to disconnect and be alone with the wonder and the horror of our own thoughts, in silence. The power to concentrate on something like a book, or sit and listen to music with no other sensory input.

I like having my Kindle with me at all times. I keep it in my backpack, along with some pens and a couple of notebooks. I like to write in journals. Before the Kindle I would usually have a physical book in there. Sometimes I’ll throw this Chromebook I’m typing on now in there too. But again – what do I really want to carry with me? Isn’t a book enough? At least the Kindle, while it can get on the web, makes it hard to do so.

Anyway, yeah, been considering how much portability is too much.

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Human Creativity Is Not Artificial

I found this article a few months ago via the 32-bit Cafe Discourse forum. One of the participants wrote it…

The Colonization of Confidence

It’s great. READ IT.

A little background on it. The author is, in fact, a professional writer and is blind. Not sure that matters at all, but maybe it does? Is an intelligent blind writer harder to sweep up in the Generative AI Hype Train? I have no idea.

Anyway, I enjoyed this short story a lot. Apparently it is a true story. Frankly, and I mean no insult to the author, there are parts that seem fictionalized. Nothing huge. A little bit of the dialog. Makes no difference if it is. It works.

In short, the story deals with an author in a writing group. One member of the group, a tech bro, has a boner for AI. Also, he’s a fucking douche. The rest of the group falls under his spell even as he destroys a good man’s confidence in his own writing.

Just read it. It’s about a 15-minute read, and worth it. Because here’s the thing.

WRITING is only done by humans. Not machines.

Writing, like all art, is a fundamentally human endeavor. Creating art involved human cognition. Remove human cognition and what you have left – is – just – shit.

I am doing writing at this exact moment. Sorry, if a machine put these exact words together, it’s not writing. ART is done by humans. I’ll go so far as to say that anyone who uses AI to write, or to even brainstorm, or to help arrange their thoughts on “paper” is not writing. Sorry. They just aren’t. If that’s you, then you are not writing.

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Unfollowing Tech

For the most part, across any social media or blogging platform I use, I am unfollowing anyone who works in “tech.” There are a few I’m staying with, represented in my blog roll, and at least one other, but for the most part I just can’t read another post or article about one of the AI platforms doing this or that, why one is better than the other, etc.

I know this is just fascinating, right?

 

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Slow Down

Saw a blogger I follow expounding on the value of AI to make everything he does easier and accelerate everything.

I reject the notion that things – anything – needs to be accelerated. That’s a pernicious idea that’s been created by the tech bros and capitalists to further enslave us.

Everyone needs to slow down.

Productivity is a lie.

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Noise

I’ve been reading the Minutes to Midnight blog for a year or two now.

Simone recently wrote an article called Noise. Then he wrote More About Noise. As you’ll see in the 2nd article, this topic seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people. I was one of those who emailed him about the first article.

More and more I find myself affected by noise of all sorts. So many things want my attention, and I only have so much I can healthily give. Only so much that I want to give. And yet the world and the internet often feel like a parasite attached to my frontal lobe, drawing out my attention — my focus – faster than it can be replenished.

It’s an addiction. Plain and simple.

I often joke that people are terrified of being alone only their own thoughts. But honestly it’s not a joke. It’s the truth. With the smartphone you can be connected all – the – fucking – time to the Beast. You think you are getting something, but you’re not. You are giving something.  Something that is limited in quantity and precious beyond compare. Your time and attention. Maybe your sanity too.

I had hoped by now to have a plan of action for 2026 for really altering my tech ownership and use. Simplification. Intention. Awareness. As I just wrote those three words I realized that maybe that is my plan. My ongoing plan. Evaluating what devices I use, and what is on them. Evaluating what digital services I use. Evaluating the software I use. Evaluating where and how I store my own data. Do I continue using the “cloud”? Is that really needed? How much of it is noise? Probably a lot.

There’s a lot to think about.

A few years ago I read a number of books about Zen. I have never really “practiced”, though I feel like aikido shares some principles with Zen practice. Maybe that’s why Zen really spoke to me. I read about Zazen, the practice of the Zen form of meditation without a goal. No “success”. You just sit there quietly, staring at a blank wall, and let your thoughts pass through your mind without really doing anything with them. My understanding is that you learn that thoughts are “just what your brain makes”, and it can make a lot of them. You observe them. You don’t act on them. You just let them happen. It seems like what you come to find is that most of them are, in fact, noise.

We already have enough noise in our heads already, generated by our own brains. We don’t need to add the noise of everyone else’s brain to that bedlam.