Technology Renaissance

DING - initial excitement. A slight rising of the heart beat. Novel information to a monotonous day. A notification from my phone.

It’s from my dance group. My excitement intensifies.

For context: I am a part of a dance group, and we communicate using Messenger. It’s my only source for updates on events, classes, and socials. I’m eager to improve my dance ability, and these oppourtunities are invaluable. So, you can imagine why a simple notification feels significant as it does.

Continuing on… I open the chat.

Excitement sharply morphs into annoyance.

It’s a post for a dance social.

But it’s a link, a Facebook event.

The way the event renders on Messenger shows no indiction of the vitals: location, time?

I have no choice but to take the dreaded action.

I must click the link.

Click

I’m transported into an unwanted realm.

As soon as my mobile browser fires up I am bombarded by distractions, random short video reels, activities of friends who are hardly keep in touch with in real life, fake news, pretty funny memes (I must admit).

Five minute pass. Then, ten minutes. Pause. Breathe.

All I wanted to know is the location and time of this event, but I’m wasting time scrolling. They got me!

This is one example of a broader problem. It’s a trend that I’m seeing, where technology isn’t serving us well.

And probably for good-ish reason. Meta are free platforms that rely on data collection as well as advertisements in order to run as a business.

That means the platform relies on our engagement. Any they are competiting for it with other platforms.

Don’t mistake engagement with good user experience.

Yes, the experience has to be good for you to stay on it.

However, if you are on the platform for longer than you want to be, I’d argue this is a poor user experience. This is because you had an objective of using the platform, for a certain objective (e.g. checking a time and locatio for an event), but you are psychologically hijacked to waste time doing other activities (e.g. scrolling memes).

Not dissimilar to Facebook: Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, said: “so we actually compete with sleep”. You would rather be sleeping, but just one more episode…

If your wellbeing and sanity isn’t the top priority, then what does this lead to?

I call it technology malaise. And I think its a shared experience in society today.

And it’s a difficult problem to tackle. I’ve tried ditching social media, but it only turns into a short hiatus.

It’s just too hard to get off these platforms because everyone else uses them.

If I quick Messenger, for example, then I won’t know when the next social will take place.

It’s like a weird drug dependence.

Yearning for what was

Remember when Facebook came out? I didn’t think of it a big deal at the time. But when I watch *The Social Network, I’m overcome with a sense of nostalgia and amazement.

And it resonates with all the work done in Silicon Valley which was to bring to the general public. No longer were computers and the internet a niche hobby for hackers, back when you had your own server, own domain, filled with your own content.

Anyone with an internet connection can a Facebook profile.

Anonymity wasn’t a deal anymore as people would be willing to use their real names and share images of themselves and their family online.

I would be shocked to see the “cool” people join Facebook.

Our behaviour changed at a global scale.

How amazing?

Facebook had amazing features following this.

Groups were awesome. When I was studying optometry, I was able to keep in touch with my fellow students in my cohort. We were able to share exam questions and help each other out.

Events were good to stay up to date with things going on. Back when I was studying, that included pub crawls, and birthdays.

Messenger was a great way to keep in touch with others and even with group chats.

Those were the positives. But we didn’t realise the negatives until now: targeted ads, algorithmic feeds, misinformation, data mining, privacy violations and that didn’t serve your mental wellbeing.

What am I doing about it?

Some problems I want to overcome:

• Being exposed to information that I do not intend to see, and just getting what I need.
• Not be stuck in echo chambers that are caused by algorithmic feeds; that also means not having very shallow understanding of certain concepts (e.g. programming for example, or cultures),
• Doom scrolling, being stuck on an infinite and constantly regenerating feed,
• Feeling inadequate because I’m constantly comparing myself to others,
• Feeling drowned out and unable to interact with anyone - just consuming,

For a while, I don’t have the usual social media apps on my phone and use my web browser to access them.

Even thought I’ve been talking about social media, the first conscious switch I made was my email client.

I had been using Gmail for years. But I noticed that my inbox would get full of junk - not junk mail, but marketing emails and newsletters.

I switched to Hey Email and Hey Calendar. I am big fan of the founders, who prioritise user experience as a core of their design over making lots of money.

Next, I worked on improving this website by creating my own template. This would encorage me to take writing on my own blog serious rather than other platforms. I shifted my focus away from analytics and open rates to making writing a labour of love and expression.

This worked and made me want to write again - just for the fun of it. I’m not worried about posting cadence or writing catching titles. I just write what I want to express.

Following this, I wanted to make the move towards technology independence, which is met with some difficulty.

Derek Sivers, a person who I admire, is a big advocate of tech independence.

I’m trying self-hosting (well, not really, but having my own private server hosted on DigitalOcean. I have tried self-hosting my own email newsletter using Keila. Other things include self hosting my own calendar and contacts, but this has shown to be a challenge so watch this space.

Finally, most of my friends and public services use social media, so ditching these platforms completely won’t be easy - or it might be impossible for the reason I can’t leave my dance group.

I posed this question to Derek Sivers, and he told me to prioritise where your friend are at over tech independence.

Moving the Bluer Skies

Social media isn’t bad but it has a bad reputation.

And it’s here to stay.

However, if we take the good of social media, what would that look like?

Recently, I’ve been using Bluesky, and maybe this is the vision of a beneficial social media application.

I want to believe.

You might be thinking: Oh, just another social media app?

But it’s different.

Underneath, it written on the AT Protocol, which is different to other social media apps.

A lot of traditional social media trap you in because of your social graph. A social graph is your interaction with others, your posts and who you are connected with.

Sure you can download your data from these social platforms, but these are posts without context. It’s impossible to take your social graph from one these centralised platforms to another without having to start again.

That means you can’t leave even if that platform isn’t great for you (e.g. ruining the quality of your mental wellbeing).

You’re trapped.

The goal of the AT Protocol is that you can choose where to host your social graph. Anyone can build on top of this protocol as well.

That means you have autonomy over your data, your social graph and you can also choose to move to a different application if you are not happy with their service.

This incentivises makers of these apps to provide a good experience to their users in order to retain them rather than appease advertisers, which is the case with traditional media apps.

My Takeaway

This makes me think how I build applications and write code. Though I don’t work on anything at that scale, I would like to build tools that makes people’s lives easier through good user experience - which is my obsession and something I want to improve in.

That’s all I have to say. Thanks for reading and feel free to get in touch if you had anything to add.