I think one of the consequences of getting older is finding out that your parents were kind of right when they complained about technology? At least you can see they weren’t entirely wrong.
I’ve been hearing from friends that it’s getting harder to find quality refrigerators that don’t connect to the internet. Why exactly does my refrigerator need wifi? Or even a computer, at that? Older fridges can last decades because they have so few failure points. They have one job and they do it well.
I tend not to use my smart TV very often because the damn thing glitches and it’s laggy and too much of a hassle unless I am really committed to watching a movie in my living room. And the worse thing is…can you even buy a non-smart TV these days that isn’t secondhand? Are they even making ordinary…yanno…televisions that don’t need software updates and internet connections, anymore?
Someone in the comments of this post asked how bluetooth earbuds are forced and everyone pointed out that a lot of phones (especially iphones) simply do not have the ports to plug in wired headphones anymore. You must get the apple wireless headphones - and I think that’s the crux of the problem. I am glad I have an android phone because I can use the old wired earbuds I’ve had for over 12 years. If I wanted to, I could buy wireless earbuds and use them instead, because my model of phone gives me that option.
And that’s the kicker: the problem is that as things are “advancing,” more and more, options are being taken away. It has nothing to do with consumer demand - obviously there are a lot of people that are not happy with these developments. But as we’re seeing, the products being made don’t reflect customer preference or choice. It’s always about is best for the companies making and selling those products.
Every day we’re hearing about new apps and tech startups and really…does anyone really want this shit? Is the nth attempt to make crypto work, the billions spent on the Metaverse, doorbell cameras; is a fridge with an IP address really allow it to do its job better? Is that actually going to improve the lives of anyone who aren’t the developers of that product? Just the other day I was reading about a tech startup that wants to be able to beam ads into your car’s GPS screen. Video ads! On a screen! To tell drivers what’s nearby when they can just…continue to look out the window because they’re supposed to be driving a goddamn car.
The problem of a world run by tech companies is that the tech isn’t being made to accommodate us, we are being forced to accommodate the tech.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again.
Nostalgia tech is a thing that would make money if they would just fucking do it. That’s why they still make records and record players.
BUT. Now it’s a luxury and luxury items sell. As LUXURYS.
Because it’s now about money. It never was. It’s about control.
Y’all understand? It was always about control.
So I had a new boiler fitted the other day. The old one had done its job for a long time but finally gave up.
It wasn’t until the damn thing was all installed and ready to go that I was told that I would need to download an app on my phone and register my details and prescise location in order to set my heating.
I would no longer have a thermostat in my house. I would only be able to control it from my smart phone.
I am 36 years old and I went mad - not at the poor boiler engineer of course, but I refused to do what he was asking. I asked for an alternative. He initially said there wasn’t one. I told him to check with the company. He phoned the company and eventually someone spoke to me about it. Explaining that this was the standard for all new boilers. I told them it was ridiculous. What if I was an elderly person living alone who didn’t own a smart phone? What if I lost my phone? What if the wifi failed? What if there was an electrical fault?
It took over half an hour of exasperated bargaining before someone agreed to swap out the smart app connected parts of the boiler with a “standard issue thermostat”. At first they were gonna charge me an extra £100 to swap it out, but I argued my case there as well.
After a lot of back and forth and effort that totally drained my energy, eventually I got a standard thermostat fitted. No smart phone app or registration needed. No extra charge. Just a lot of extra effort that someone a bit less stubborn and determined to avoid this technological attack on basic living would have easily backed down on.
We are already living in a world run by tech companies, where every. single. thing. in our lives is slowly being transformed into another system where they can track our every move, steal our personal information, and make life that little bit more complicated.
The fact that even white goods like refridgerators and washing machines are starting to require app connections is worrying. It’s not a good thing, and its not being done for convenience. It’s being done for data tracking, location tracking, and finding new ways to inflict ads on us.
Sorry if this rant derailed the post a bit, but the memory is still fresh and so apparently is my anger! But at least this is an example where being persistent and stubborn does heed results against them!
Hired someone to swap out my mom’s programmable thermostat for an old-fashioned analog one. (She has memory loss. The new one confused her.)
The tech arrived with a “simpler” programmable one. That’s not what I asked for, I say.
“I get it. Even these are too complicated for some people. What we really recommend is a smart thermostat that her kids can control with an app. It gets too cold in her house, she calls you. I don’t even think they make those old round ones any more.”
Haha, I have an ace in the hole: I whip out an analog thermostat, which I bought at a hardware store because I knew this was going to happen. He rolls his eyes, but he does install it.
He didn’t even work for the people who would benefit from the data! He was a handyman! But he was persuaded that smart tech was smart, and in the end all I could do was persuade him to humor us.
The problem here is most programmable tech is either proprietary junk that needs a custom app, proprietary junk that needs a proprietary home automation hub, or proprietary junk that needs to talk to a server in the cloud.
It would be kind of cool if I could, say, hook up all my home appliances to a separate LAN via ethernet, and then I could query my home server to see what is running and how much electricity it used. It would be cool if I could turn my appliances on and off like a shelly relay. It would be cool if devices had an RS-232 port so an Arduino could talk to it. It would be cool if I didn’t need a proprietary app to talk to my smart devices, if I could just pair my machine via Bluetooth and use generic tools provided by my OS.
That’s not even how some printers work any more. HP printers need an app and a server. It’s completely uncool that my washing machine has WLAN.
There could be so much cool home automation and monitoring, and it’s all thwarted by Bosch devices that don’t speak IKEA, Chinese smart watches that don’t speak Apple, Phillips light bulbs that don’t speak LG.
But by and large, what’s the point? What’s the point of turning devices on and off remotely, my stand mixer, my coffee maker, my washing machine? What’s the point if I’m not there to drink the coffee? What good does it do me if my stand mixer is smart? What good does it do me to have a cloud-enabled scanner if I need to physically insert the pages I want to scan anyway? Why would I want to have a smart TV if I can’t even hook it up to a VCR and record a live stream in crappy 4:3 SD.
Honestly, what good does a smart TV do me versus a set-top box?
Maybe in the far future, a home robot looking like R2D2 will be able to communicate with my rice cooker.
But it’s far more likely that, far in the future, you will need one app to talk to R2D2 and one app for the Rice cooker, and IKEA will tell you that their smart hub for light bulbs can talk to C3PO, but you need a different protocol droid to talk to their new and improved speaker system. That protocol droid can’t talk to the rice cooker, but it can talk to R2D2, as long as you use the right app.
maybe you’re the one who got away. maybe it was their loss. maybe you walking away meant you opened up yourself to the possibility of finding someone who could truly treat you right. just maybe.
if you’re struggling lately, i hope this reaches you.
we will be okay. you will be okay. you will grow and evolve and heal. you will enjoy life again even if it’s not the same as it was the last time you were happy. you will live your life not feeling stuck. you will do more than survive. you will thrive.
I’m so tired. I feel like I’m crawling to the finish line but I’ll get there.
