I will never forgive the tech industry for what it has done to the world I was brought up into as a technologist.
I was literally raised by a programmer. My dad was a Unix guy long before I ever knew what Unix is. No joke, Iād heard of SGML before Iād heard of HTML. To this day I donāt consider myself much of a Vim whiz, but the reason I even know how to use it is because I first cut my teeth on Vi. I supposed if my dad had been into Emacs, I would have learned that instead!
I had already been a computer userāand budding programmer myselfāfor literally a decade before I even encountered the #OpenWeb on top of this newfangled thing called the Internet. I like to joke I was already using a computer when I was 2 years old. Iām not sure if thatās strictly speaking true, but close enough!
I say all this because you deserve the preamble to my pricipal statement: as someone in their 40s whoās been a hard-core computer nerd for nearly that long, I find the end result of the now vast corporations in control of said computer field to be deplorable, ghastly, boneheaded, ludicrous, and fucking absurd.
I can barely even stomach anything Apple is churning out these days, and theyāre one of the least disagreeable firms if you can believe it.
This isnāt āold man yells at cloudā. Because the truth is, thereās actually tons of awesome technology being worked on and demonstrated every day. And the Web itself is a marvel of engineering, better now than itās ever been and capable of oh so much.
So if thereās so much good tech available, how come there is so much bad tech thrown in our faces at the exact same time? We can all offer some plausible answers to that question, but in the end it doesnāt matter much. This is the world we now live in. Oodles of good tech, surrounded and nearly infected by a veritable flood of very bad tech.
And I nearly canāt stand it. ā¹ļø
IPSIE:
Interoperability
Profile for
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Enterprise
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/18458/636068
āYour outie earned first place in MotorTrendās Ultimate Car Rankingsā
Coming up on the fifth anniversary of our ongoing pandemic. Iām feeling extra down about it this year. Thereās all the regular, complex feelings around people going āback to normalā but now with the added bonus of fash trying to decimate our already-weak public health. It all just feels so bleak.
Sometimes art needs to be angry.
I consider a lot of the art Iāve experienced (or made!) over the years and so much of it has trended towards the serene or the cerebral or the celebratory. Hell, my first solo album was literally called Garden Journey and was inpired by meditation & massage music.
And donāt get me wrong, Iām not saying art thatās romantic or relaxing or comical or whimsical or joyful or merely decorative is bad or ālesser thanā.
But Iām at a moment in my lifeāand a moment in the zeitgeistāwhen Iām longing for art that rattles. Art that shakes, confronts, confounds, and condemns. Art that is fearless, raw, offensive. Art that raises a fist and takes a stand.
Iām not saying we should all dye our hair purple, listen to death metal, or set cars on fire. Remember, capitalism has a way of absorbing even critques of its own system, leading you to āsell outā even as you decry being a sellout. Itās insidious in that way.
What I am saying is as people who believe in more than empty, self-absorbed materialism; who truly do care about a #spirituality which requiresānay, demandsāa deep and relentless drive to fight for social justice and leaving the world in better shape than how you found it; it is incumbent upon us to seek out as well as create artifacts which move the needle in some concrete manner and wake audiences the fuck up. (aka STAY WOKE! š )
Are you with me on this? Iām just not finding myself drawn to the typical pablum. I am expecting more from the creators I look up to and admireāand I am trying to push myself this year in the same way.
Coming up on the fifth anniversary of our ongoing pandemic. Iām feeling extra down about it this year. Thereās all the regular, complex feelings around people going āback to normalā but now with the added bonus of fash trying to decimate our already-weak public health. It all just feels so bleak.
Iām really going back to my hippie roots this year.
And itās so funny to me because my parents pretty much went on the usual trajectory that many of their cohort didā¦starting out in the š¼ āflower powerā ā®ļø 1960s California beach subculture and ending upāwell letās just say quite on the opposite side of things. (My dad at leastā¦hard to say where my birth mom would be now as she died 20 years agoā¦)
Whereas I had a corporate jobby-job and owned my own home in my early 20s (the late aughts), and now I have downsized radically (glory be to #minimalism!) and am quite ready to tear down the whole fucking establishment and join a commune or something. š
I donāt know what my Young Evangelical Republican self would have thought of his older self these two decades later, but I can tell you one thing: I was actually pretty damn miserable back then on a regular basis, and now? The world may have gone to shit but way down deep in my bonesā¦I have never felt happier. š
P.S. Eat the rich.
