A Different Relationship With Tech

My attitude towards tech has changed considerably in the last five years.

No longer am I optimistic about where things are going. No longer am I excited about the new technology advancements. Because what are they, really?

We made a slightly better phone this year.

We made a slightly bigger and slightly more performant Switch than the last one.

Great, thank you.

Thing is, the latest and greatest is not much greater than last year’s.

I was so ready to replace my iPhone 13 Pro last year that I wrote it an eulogy — yet, ultimately I kept it for another year. 16 Pro was incredibly disappointing and I passed. A camera button and some half-baked “AI” features? Come on.

I’m even thinking of skipping the 17s this year too. Just going to keep the 13 Pro until Apple finally releases a foldable. Hopefully next year! Now that would be something interesting — first time in a while.

But it’s a larger phenomenon than just a new iPhone being uninspiring. Tech just isn’t fun anymore. Being online is tiring.

Enshittification and monetization are sucking all the joy out of everything. Websites, services, apps, platforms, games — getting worse every year while becoming more expensive at the same time. Finding new ways to squeeze out revenue instead of finding new ways of making a better product.

Just how long can this go on? There must be a limit where a product just becomes completely unusable under the weight of all that bullshit. At some point we won’t have any more money to spend on subscriptions, loot boxes, battle passes, micro-transactions, etc.

There must be a point where things finally break. When people break and don’t accept this nonsense anymore. Am I there already? Maybe that’s why I’m so surprisingly open to the idea of trying out Linux?