Posted on 12/26/2015 7:38:04 PM PST by SoFloFreeper
Astra Taylor's iPhone has a cracked screen. She has bandaged it with clear packing tape and plans to use the phone until it disintegrates. She objects to the planned obsolescence of today’s gadgetry, and to the way the big tech companies pressure customers to upgrade.
Taylor, 36, is a documentary filmmaker, musician and political activist. She's also an emerging star in the world of technology criticism. She's not paranoid, but she keeps duct tape over the camera lens on her laptop computer - because, as everyone knows, these gadgets can be taken over by nefarious agents of all kinds.
Taylor is a 21st-century digital dissenter. She's one of the many technophiles unhappy about the way the tech revolution has played out. Political progressives once embraced the utopian promise of the Internet as a democratizing force, but they've been dismayed by the rise of the "surveillance state," and the near-monopolization of digital platforms by huge corporations.
its just prudent to avoid people that try to rip you off more often even if it means buying one brand that is only programmed to break down every 3 years as opposed to every year...
Editor? didn’t know there was such a thing. Does it glue the chads back into the holes in the punch cards? Sounds pretty useful. I’ll have to look into this.
I don’t know what tech you are using my iPad is first generation (9 yrs old) and works just fine. My MacBook Pro is 15 yrs old same thing. I do have a Mac air that’s only 6 yrs old
If you buy crap you get crap. Price and cost are two very different things
There is also a thing called ‘invention’
Each year there are new inventions that make our gadgets better.
Planning has nothing to do with it.
I gave up on punch cards when my cat kept eating the rubber bands.
Not literally true, as I started on computers just as screen editors had replaced punch cards, but my cat does like rubber bands...
That's what the Transhumanists are focused on.
Imagine you can't be killed, but you can be tortured and you are placed in a prison from which there is no escape.
This is what the Transhumanists might end up getting.
Essentially, by developing the technology that might place them in a virtual Heaven, they will also create the means by which they can be placed in a virtual Hell.
I love to play with all the new technology toys. I’m a big kid when it comes to this stuff. Having said that, the underlying trends connected to technology are rubbing me wrong, and like many, I see the handwriting on the wall.
The future of technology going forward will always be a battle against the powers of this earth, and their constant drive to surveil and control the masses. We just want to enjoy these wonders and make our lives easier.
I see a point when I will likely step away and become a bitter Luddite. The joy and advantages of all this cool tech will be outweighed by the loss of freedom and control over my own life.
Of course price and cost are two different things, people aren’t going to sell something for what it cost them.
Need you mean price vs value?
I wouldn't say a $1,500 for each TV set was cheap. Both were the same brand and cost near the same and were some of the better sets available. I don't buy the cheap stuff. They both went out with the same symptoms close to same time period after the warranty expired.
Better step away soon then.
“She’s not paranoid, but she keeps duct tape over the camera lens on her laptop computer — because, as everyone knows, these gadgets can be taken over by nefarious agents of all kinds.”
Ha! Little does she know that a really GOOD hacker can jack up the amps on that camera to SEE RIGHT THROUGH her duct tape!
“We need a movement, she said, “that says no to the existing order.””
Well, heck, that’s easy enough toots: just quit using your ipads, ipods, imacs, iwatches, PCs, cell phones, roku boxes and the like, and you’ll be saying “NO” to the existing order!
They dream of a co-op model: people dealing directly with one another without having to go through a data-sucking corporate hub.
Co-op Model Suggestion 1: Meet face to face.
Co-op Model Suggestion 2: Mail letters to each other.
Co-op Model Suggestion 3: Rig a network of strings with tin cans on the ends amongt the co-opers.
All of the above are excellent means of dealing directly with one another without having to go through a data-sucking corporate hub.
“Progressives are appalled by the mind-boggling profits of the big tech companies.”
Progressives are also appalled by mind-boggling profits from petroleum companies, food companies, auto manufacturing companies, Walmart, and uh, actually now that I think about it, Progressives are appalled at ANY company that makes ANY amount of profit!
“The left also takes note of ... the rise of a techno-elite.”
Of course, the left could be techo-elite too if they studied hard stuff in collge like computer science instead of, say, Wymen of Color Grievance Studies Dance Theory, but that would be too hard. Thus the left would far rather redistribute techo-eliteness from the techno-elite haves to the techo-elite have-nots, so that everyone would have an equal level of techno-eliteness.
“Most painful for progressives has been the rise of the “sharing economy” ... They feel as though the idea was stolen from them and perverted into something that hurts workers.”
I do feel for the Progressives on this one because no one ever shared anything before they came up with the idea of sharing. Of course, if the Progressives had had a bit more techo-eliteness, they might have been able to patent “sharing” and not had have it stolen from them by a bunch of meanies.
“They say that companies such as Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit and Amazon Mechanical Turk are creating a “gig economy” — one that, although it offers customers convenience and reasonable prices, is built on freelancers and contractors who lack the income or job protections of salaried employees.”
Yes, I think we can all agree that convenience and reasonable prices are terrible, terrible things, AND there’s clearly nothing worse than working for yourself and not having a boss, well, except of course for working for someone and having a boss, so the solution of course is that no one should work for themselves OR for someone else.
“She was born to be a tech critic.”
So much easier to be born to be a tech critic than to be born to be technically proficient in some critical technology.
“He suggested that civilization started making wrong turns in the Middle Ages.”
WAY too late to fix THAT one, Ace!
“Growing louder and more animated as his lecture went on”
Yes, shout louder and harder if you don’t think your audience is “getting it”. That always works.
“The dean of the digital dissenters is Jaron Lanier. He can typically be found at home in California’s Berkeley Hills, swiveling in a chair in front of a computer screen and a musical synthesizer.”
Yep, that thar is a genu-wine tech dissenter for you!
“Lanier’s broadest argument is that technological change involves choices. Bad decisions will lock us into bad systems.”
Right. Because once a decision has been made, it can never, never, never ever be changed. Ever.
“He’d like to see people compensated for their data in the form of micropayments.”
I wonder how much posting “Yea, my dog took a poop on my front lawn today” would be worth! (I suspect that he’d have to invent nanopayments for posts like that one.)
“Lanier told his 8-year-old daughter recently: “In our society there are two paths to success: One is to be good at computers and the other is to be a sociopath.””
He failed to tell her that a sociopath who was good with computers would be even MORE successful.
“Gopher has not, however, entirely vanished, and over one hundred Gopher servers still provide access to more than a million content items. Unfortunately the number of modern web browsers with support for Gopher is dwindling, potentially rendering all of this content inaccessible.”
http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/
Love that movie.
Objects to planned obsolescence. Buys iPhone.
I didn’t look it up, but I’m going to say that the “I Pad” is no way “9 years” old.
Skilled techs and trades people are too often shunned, even. Little typo correction there.
Hey Astra! You can get your phone screen fixed. You can also continue to use your original iphone if you want.
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I use a flip phone that I have had for seven years.
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