Why Are We Here?

As you can see I’ve been thinking lots lately about the technology and habits of the past versus those of the current era. Probably reading articles like Dan Sheehan’s Let’s Have a Difficult Year got me started. In that excellent article he talks about a project he’s undertaking where he has taken stock of the modern conveniences he currently uses and begins removing those that are designed to make his world “smoother”. His thought? Much of our current malaise comes from the fact that we’ve attempted to engineer our lives to remove inconvenience when it is that very inconvenience that can bring joy and satisfaction. For example, ordering delivered food results in delicious food arriving at your house in minutes. At the same time you’re avoiding the opportunity of enjoying cooking a meal for you and your family, or visiting the local restaurant yourself and interacting with your neighbours. Sometimes timing or a busy day makes it necessary but we often default to the easy option.

Most, but not all of this is related to technology: I’m hearing more people talking about cutting down their technology and using more analog technology. This makes me think of this meme I saw earlier today:

All three of us here have heard friends and coworkers talking about ways in which they are leaving behind lots of the technology that years before they claimed to be addicted to. Looking at one’s phone or logging in to the Internet in years past was often to either escape with light reading or videos, to pursue a hobby or connect with others. Now, most platforms are algorithmic and by design can relentlessly provide more upsetting content. On the other hand, the real world, whether nature, the library, our friends’ homes or an improv show, can be less upsetting.

Nostalgia often makes us just wish for the “good old days” with selective memory of what they were like. There were better things, of course, and worse things. And the reality is we’re here. So the answer for me is that a more reasonable approach for improving my life both online and off is to make conscious choices – and also to ask ourselves why we’re making them.

A simple example: Last week Sage was using her computer and the gestures on her headphones (to turn up/down volume, next/previous track) were not working. To fix it she decided to try loading an entirely new Linux distribution (which admittedly can be fun and exciting but also take loads of time when you want to customize it as much as she does). She installed a new one, got a long ways into the process and then after several days of spending a bit of time every day sorting out issues and customizing it thought “Wait a minute, this was only to make this one feature on my headphones work.” Fortunately she installed the new operating system alongside the old one and was able to go right back to it. All the work she was doing, configuring things, setting up things, making workarounds when things didn’t quite work as she hoped was to fix a minor inconvenience. Hilariously when she went back to the old installation, even the headphones worked.

When it comes to our lives, it’s worth taking the same look. Are we more angry after logging into Twitter? Are we tired of seeing ignorant friends of friends’ comments on posts (or worse still, our own!) on Facebook? Why are we even in those places? Is it fulfilling an important role? If not, why are we there except out of habit? If it is, can we mindfully curate our experience to make it better?

Lately I’ve been reworking how I spend time on my computer.

First off, like Sage with her Linux distribution, I looked at my social media use and why I was there. Originally I went to connect and stay up to date with friends and later, sites like Twitter allowed me to meet like-minded strangers. Somewhere along the way, Facebook and Instagram went south, invading my privacy and creating algorithms designed to radicalize some and upset others to the point they keep checking back – often to respond to yet another comment from someone who is wrong on the internet.

So many of us take this situation for granted. It used to be good but now it’s terrible. But at some point we need to remember that we can just leave when it no longer serves its puprose – just as eventually Twitter and Meta products got too toxic and too unethical and I left. They no longer met the needs I came there for and no amount of tweaking and filtering would make it better. Not to mention the fact that I was done training their AI models. (I left gmail and most google products for the same reason). I do stick around Mastodon with its algorithm-free feed and really excellent content filters.

So how do I spend my time here instead? By going back to some of the tools I used back when the Internet was still new and exciting for me:

In the early days of the Internet I would browse sites. I had a set of bookmarks to check every day, blogs (before they were even called that – back in the days of “online journals”), “Best of the web” sites, other entertainment sites. New content came from recommendations from friends or links from sites I happened to visit. Somewhere along the line that changed and social media became the source. Lately, though, I’ve been using a hybrid method. Some things I read come from social media, but there are other sources too:

A site that feels very “late 90s” is Metafilter – it’s been around about that long too. The links tend to be interesting and it’s got a simple, chronological feed. When I see an article linked that I want to read, I add it to my offline reader. For a while it was Instapaper or Pocket but rather than give a big company my business and data I now use a self-hosted instance of Wallabag. And here’s where we get into a bit of modern technology intersecting with that: I have a Wallabag client on my iPad that downloads that content. I can then read it offline without being distracted by browsing other things or other notifications as my iPad is locked down to such an extent that it is basically an enhanced e-reader. Originally I did this with some of the iPad’s parental controls but to add some flexibility I ordered a Brick. This piece of hardware will allow me to specify a list of “permitted apps” (let’s say my e-reader apps, Wallabag, and maybe email so I can send my family recommendations and screenshots from things I’m reading). I tap the iPad on the brick and it locks. Nothing else will work until I tap it again. I’ll be doing the same sort of thing with my phone – watch this blog for more discussion of how this experiment goes). Here’s how it looks on my computer:

Instead of browsing between my usual sites from my bookmarks list like I used to 30 years ago, I actually resorted to 20 year old technology: an RSS reader. Older folks will remember Google Reader. Most blogs and sites publish an RSS feed behind the scenes that updates when the site is updated. The RSS reader checks that feed periodically and downloads the content and it can be read through the reader itself or, if I choose, send it to Wallabag. There are many online like Feedly, Inoreader or The Old Reader but again I’ve self-hosted this one with FreshRSS. This one gives me a very simple interface – I can read from there, share to Wallabag or social media. It looks like this:

My routine, generally speaking involves opening this in the morning, sending the articles that look interesting for offline reading and then logging out. Less time at my computer means less stimulus and less distraction. There’s also something from the current world that is notably missing from this reader. There is no engineering to get me to spend more time there. There are no suggested articles or sponsored articles. There is also no infinite scroll. When I open it it shows me what’s new. If there’s nothing new it shows what’s in the screen above: a chronological list of articles available.

There’s one more thing I realized as I was writing it. This approach fundamentally reduces the attractiveness of spending unplanned time on the Internet while at the same time keeping me informed and sufficiently entertained. Where I could keep scrolling on Facebook or Instagram until the end of time, Mastodon just shows me who I am following and the content in chronological order. I don’t follow a ton of people so if I haven’t been around for a day or so, I scroll down a few screens and then am out of new content. There, that’s done.

Metafilter and my RSS reader are the same. The RSS reader shows me what’s new, and if I don’t follow a ton of feeds, that’s done in a few minutes. Today only one person I follow updated their feed. (Hi Rupali!) I didn’t even save that entry for offline reading. I finished it right then.

This has freed up quite a lot of time – time I’ve been using for things like riding with strangers on Zwift or reading – which has been much easier to find time for since taking a page from my elementary school years and just instituting daily “Sustained Silent Reading” times.

What’s your online use like? Are you getting what you want from that time and if not, what can you do differently to make it better?