Making Tech Sane Again
Noise. So much noise.
And so much waste.
Creating and interacting with digital content is inevitable for everyone these days, but, as we all know, the signal-to-noise ratio of the internet has made separating the valuable content from the noise and clutter of advertising, bots, misinformation, and just plain nonsense almost impossible. The internet generates more waste than product anymore, both in digital terms and in real ones (in the form of very destructive e-waste in the very non-digital world).
Even the most popular operating systems that come installed on most devices these days (iOS, Android, Windows) only add to the waste. They are marketing platforms as much as they are operating systems: they exist to help sell new services and software, which means a significant part of their raison d’etre is to get in your way, distract your attention, create noise and clutter on your screen.
This is a blog dedicated to making tech sane again. Cutting out the noise and waste of the digital world in order to concentrate on content, creativity, and communication. Of the real stuff. Not the bullshit.
There are ways of interacting with and within the digital world that can be more mindful, less full of clutter, and more elegant, without sacrificing functionality. Ways of taking back some control over your computer and your computing.
One way to do this is to engage in a little reflection in the face of all the constant innovation. Is the newest tool or technology necessarily the best tool for the job? What lessons can we learn from the history of computing and software about what really works, and works sustainably?
There are many ways we “consumers” of computing can take back a lot of control. Open-source operating systems and software tools tend to focus on doing one thing well rather many things only adequately. They don’t need to sell you anything, so they don’t tend to distract. Plain-text, especially for writing and other text-intensive activities, can be liberating from propietary file formats and allow interoperability across every OS and every device. Simpler, less resource-intensive tools and platforms, such as linux, can run very well on older systems, increasing the longevity of devices so they don’t become unecessary e-waste.
Computing can become more mindful, calm, sane. And it should.
This blog is itself an example of what I mean. It’s not produced using any fancy tools at all. It’s hosted on Github (for free), which is a service used by many programmers and developers for tracking and versioning software projects. But paired with another tool, called Jekyll, it also becomes an elegantly simple vehicle for hosting a blog. Everything I do for this blog is generated using the simplest of computing tools: a terminal program and a text editor. I write posts and pages using a simple set of formatting structures called Markdown. I create the new post, using this very simple syntax. I update the online files on github to incorporate the post, and the software simply transforms my writing into a web format, complete with a minimalist theme that concentrates on the real content–my words–without other distraction.
The tech never gets in my way. It. Just. Works.
My hope is to help make saner, less noisy, and more elegant computing accessible to everyone.