Human Digitization And What Can Be Done About It

People. What a study in selective reasoning.

My last two posts, here, and here, were a sort of roundup encapsulating the potentiality of life changing events that the digital age could foist upon us if we allow our phones, and those with access to the information in them, to subsume every aspect of our lives. The point being that with nefarious intent, the trusting nature of humankind and the reliance on digital conveniences, could blow up in our faces.

 It has been while talking with people about the issues I raise in the aforementioned posts that something interesting happened. Despite people being one hundred percent unified on the problems happening in the world, and equally sharing concern about the implications of humans being digitized, incredibly and immediately the focus of the conversation shifts from agreement to targeted blame. Suddenly, it’s “fucking Trump,” or “fucking Biden,” which is astonishing to me since we know the origins of the mess we are now in predates both of them.

The seeds of corruption were being planted long, long ago. It takes time, and a lot of it, to corrupt a system on this magnitude, which rationale thinking would tell us, make it impossible to be either Biden or Trump’s fault alone.

All this hate, though.

The assumption people make when I raise concerns that our basic freedoms continue to be encroached upon is that I am assigning responsibility to the whichever of the former presidents they hate. They assume that when I write I do it through a lens of despising either Trump or Biden, whichever aligns with their views. Bear in mind, I make no mention of either one of them.

I suppose, at the end of the day, the silver lining is that the force behind the rage could mobilize people to resist being sucked in to a system they don’t want. If it works as fuel to stop people from complying with requests – and mandates - that don’t serve them, then should we welcome it? I don’t know, maybe so if it removes us as cogs in a wheel that enables a self-serving and self-preserving system like our political system to function as it does. Prying. Intrusive. Manipulative. Controlling.

I became uncomfortable with our dependency on, and addiction to, the phones awhile back. In looking ahead and feeling that the ship had sailed, and is headed off a cliff with AI, I started backing off. To cope, I now think of my phone as I do my dishwasher: I use it when I need it.

Aside from the satisfaction I get from dismantling aspects of the grid that had tethered me to technology, I am also enjoying the greater sense of freedom I now have from adding space between my actual life and my digital life. My new policy is that of basic investment strategy: diversify. So if you lose, you don’t lose it all.

Here are my top picks for loosening the grip of the grid:

Smart phones are the gateway. They are what grants access to every component of our lives if we allow it, often without our permission.

• Get a flip phone. For roughly ten bucks a month you have another option. I use it for several of my security codes just so everything is not in one place.

• Turn off tracking. Leave the phone home. Get a faraday box or sleeve because, according to Elon Musk, even when you turn your phone or wifi off, it’s not actually off. It is still collecting data which uploads the minute you reconnect.

• Use cash as much as possible.

• Don’t go all in on biometrics or digital wallets. These two things that when/if connected could spell out disaster that can’t be reversed. For more on that, read Sitting Ducks, Herded Sheep and the Boiling Frog and Is A Dystopian or Utopian Future Ahead?

• Choose or switch to companies that offer privacy.

  • Rumble instead of, or in addition to, YouTube.

  • Protonmail offers email privacy. No snooping, tracking or scanning every word for AI libraries.

  • Substack makes space for independent writers. They are not censored like mainstream media, which I experience firsthand when I wrote for Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

  • 2FAS Authenticator is open source and does not require personal information to use.

  • Ground News gives both sides of the news by party.

  • Anthropic AI refused to sell Claude to the government who wanted to use their AI to surveil its customers.

  • The Epoch Times isn’t owned by mainstream media and every headline is not what you must have, must do or must think like Apple and all it's siblings.

  • Duck Duck Go for search allows you to control your information with no tradeoffs.

  • Signal for texting only the sender and receiver can read the messages. Even if you just set it up with your closest family and friends, at least there is a way to start protecting your most private relationships and conversations.

Or, best of all. Take a page from Bill Maher's handbook. The best place to start is witht the algorithms because they are the screws that tighten the grid - and it's grip on humanity - more and more every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iTWS2AIeok