the anti-tech movement is back. 

I agree. I've worked in Tech 25 years. When I started in the industry the commoditization of everything hadn't started. I find the weaponisation against us through the use of psychology the worst part of how things have progressed. Instead of it being used for the good of humanity it supports the wealth accumulation for a few.

@@rachelbrian8602 psychology is a speudo-science based on observing patterns in culturalised individuals. get out of your mind and you can't be controlled. as long as fear guides your life, you're owned.

Agreed.

This is a great point! I used to work for a home health care company that marketed itself based on the fact that both caregivers and clients/clients’ families had designated apps. The app was helpful for caregivers to share charting notes with each other and clients, but it was terrible at assigning caregivers. If they had only used the app for things like charting and done the caregiver matching manually it would have been much better.

When you have an honest love for technology, you dont love the technology itself, but the benefits it creates. Even though Social media, hype corps like Tesla, smart everything, commercial space flight and 1000 ways to track your fitness are all technologies, I dont love them but despise them. They are not designed to improve lifes. Their sole purpose is the financial gain of the inventor and manipulation of the user.

Real life is interesting to me. It's just very hard for me to interact with people, due to my condition. But I'd like to keep trying, anyway.

I was a teenager in 1856 and let me tell you there then the balance was optimal. I was a teenager in 2019 and let me tell you then everything was great even though this is just a faulty memory and not reflective of the actual experiences that were happening I was a teenager in 2135 and my IQ is 70 and that was the best time to be alive.

Then read Ted's books

@@Lepiota or read not how to get pregnant at a young age.

@@joandarc441 qu'est ce que tu me racontes toi 👁👁

I have to agree with you, I’ve being working on a market garden for the last 6 months and it’s really hard physical work but having a sense of really tight knit community and being satisfied with what you have done after the day is over and being able to really see what you have produced. I think that the reach for the aesthetic is trying to reclaim that sense of community and lack of alienation of work which unfortunately a lot of people have lost in their lives.

they just want a nice background for pictures

As a South American ~country girl~ it's so funny seeing people on the cottagecore community that never spent a day working in a farm and portray it like it's stardew valley or something

Maybe they just want to portray it in a nice way. I have a garden, which at some points provides my family most of the fruits and a good portion of vegetables. I've had so much fruit that I had to freeze it. Currently trying to eat or use all of our mandarins. I don't have enough space to grow more yet, but we have chickens, ducks and quails too. I plan on moving somewhere with more space so I can grow more - I don't feel anywhere near challenged enough yet, most days I wish I had more jobs to do in the garden. Most days all I do is water my seedlings or harvest. A lot of days it does feel blissful and peaceful like they portray in the aesthetic. Sometimes it's the only thing keeping me relaxed and happy when I have a lot of study to do for uni. From my experience the cottagecore aesthetic is pretty accurate. I don't think it has to portray all the frustrations that come with it (like the chickens escaping and eating all your seedlings), some things can just be nice.

I think that is the whole point. Because it's an " aesthetic" not a lifestyle for them. Something pretty to the eye and just that.

beautiful way to put it

It has to be about the profit, otherwise there is no incentive to invest millions of your own money to get out new products. The profit incentive is not the problem, the real problem is that it's disruptive for user's psychology and spreads misinformation. So they should focus on pushing out actual useful products and they can still get their money for doing so.

@@Leonhart_93 that’s what used to happen before the advent of social media, big tech figured out that selling actual tools that benefit your average human is far less profitable than tapping into our inherent desire to feel engaged, amused, etcetera. The problem is the profit incentive. We wouldn’t have platforms with exploitative algorithms otherwise. We are the commodity, the product, because big tech makes money by using their algorithms to keep us engaged and selling our data to the highest bidder(for advertising purposes). The process is so entrenched in the industry that the general public may never escape its effects.

@@puppetman1086 That's how it is for now, since most haven't figured out the honey trap they are in. But I am sure there will be big anti social media and anti zombification movements in the future. They could capitalize on that and make profit by offering us products that would help with the addiction.

Tech has always been about profit, if technology wasn’t profitable it wouldn’t be used and further developed.

If you are still on youtube and receive a notification for my comment, there is actually a way to turn off comment notifications! That helped me a lot. I try my best to stay off social media as much as I can but it is hard. I think tbh it plays a role in causing depression and makes people angry and bitter.

just don't bother political channels in RU-vid you will be fine

​@@ahuman5772 "technology bad cause people are mean :("

@@joandarc441- Channels discussing social issues are far worse.

I completely agree, and I also think it kind of contributed to us having trouble to deal with the complexity and contradiction that's inherently human. I'm a Brazilian and right now the collectiveness is so sensitive that there isn't any espace to embrace differences and contradiction. Right now it's a gigantic battle of us x them.

@@alicelond yes yes yes (sim? portuguesa aqui rs). I've grown up mostly online and I've seen how people are continually mocked and "cancelled" for the smallest things (not talking about actual harassment here, just differing opinions or ways of life). Like people just don't know how to deal with conflict. Everyone has a scorched earth approach these days - maybe it's the last resort, when the powers that be have refused to listen to people's legitimate concerns for decades, all because they'd rather be put to sleep by the sweet lullaby of more profit. I had to figure it out on my own because the education I got was "if you're one of the good ones, you don't need to worry". But there is no "good ones" - just different sides fighting for moral superiority. I promise there really isn't, even if you're a self-sacrificing priest, even if your core ideas are all about love and peace and housing for all. You are still fighting, you are still on one side, and of course you're going to get defensive about it. Interpersonal and political conflict requires a tact and patience that we simply forego nowadays, because it's more profitable to "dunk" your opponent, or cancel them, or use identity politics to pull the rug from under their feet. It makes you more popular and richer, therefore closer to victory. Even at an interpersonal level, I always think an argument is the end of a relationship instead of something that's natural. I feel like raising my voice is inherently abusive and "narcissistic" because of all the shit people talk about online. Yes, we need to defend victims, yes, we need to raise awareness, but awareness should not be paranoia. I'm paranoid every time I disagree with someone because what if that's the final straw for them? Just some more paranoid rambling here, ofc. There are people who are not like this and I've found them and need to stick to them, because the other option is to simply annihilate myself out of existence.

@@kawaiixtc I felt the same things you've just described with Twitter! Every time I read something, I'd feel as if every complaint or wrong-doing was mine, and this lead me to great levels of anxiety. It's funny to realize how we're not simply machines who can separate different instances of our lives (this reminded me of the show Severance, btw), and the stimulus we receive online affect directly the way we interact with each other. It gives me a certain comfort to read your comment and to know that someone with a totally different background has the same feelings towards this. My personal solution nowadays involves a very difficult effort to embrace the complexity and that every single one of us WILL make mistakes, but this doesn't mean we're not worthy.

@@kawaiixtc You are one smart person in this world. I feel that a lot of people simply do not respect others´opinion. There is a lack of empathy from everyone nowadays and they want to make everything political. I literally stopped hanging out with a friends in fears that she would get me cancelled because I do not share the same point of view as hers. I do understand hers but she will never understand mine and I dont think its fair plus I even try to not talk about these topics but shes constantly bringing them up:(

@@kawaiixtc very well said. You put my thoughts perfectly into words

It’s interesting how their motives have been twisted to be aligned with people like the unibomber, who was unanimously anti-tech conceptually. The Luddites actually seemed to have quite reasonable concerns and demands, based on concrete conditions of their life and the future, as opposed to an innate hate of what is new, different, or “unnatural”

Great explanation. In this sense it wouldn't hurt for all of us to be demand we partake in the benefits of technological advancements, if people are living worse and unhappier then that isn't progress.

So what's the point of life then? If we were to have a progressive tax code to fund more programs so people will not despise the system we currently live in...that seems like social democracy. It seems like you're saying, "We criticize certain aspects of the system, but we're not cringe regressive reactionaries." You have to grapple with the Unabomber's manifesto. Violence aside, what is actually wrong with his predictions? He was influenced by Jacques Ellul, who was an anarchist. Capitalism, statist repression, and environmental degradation are linked together.

that's a fantastic perspective on our current relationship with technology, it's so frustrating on how much tech could TRULY help us but instead suck away so much of our happiness by getting us hooked on short term dopamine fixes and the constant bombardment of tragedy in our world. i feel like if our society wasn't so hyper capitalistic and profit focused, tech wouldn't consume our lives as it does now and it would enhance our lives instead of being our lives.

This is why i deleted the RU-vid app on my phone and now use my mobile browser instead, i spend a lot less time bored on RU-vid now

It always comes back to capitalism

good point to bring up in this dialogue

@@leilaschrof529 I mostly use RU-vid for people playing different fighting games/Horror stories or how to you know how to download pirated movies/music/ and games 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for sharing this. Well written, and illuminating. I personally feel that solitude is bliss, but I very much appreciate your perspective here, and the described connection of the cottagecore/ anti-tech movement. It makes sense. I still love letters and landlines, myself. 😊 I am curious-- have you gone back to being a bookworm, or do you have any desire to do so?

A natural urge to socialize would come back too when disengaged with those superficial forms of communication

But, do not be fast to discard the important ethic of leaving the cities, they are death upon earth. Do give a closer look to Max Neef's human scaled development and Calhoun's lost papers. Maybe even the Agnotological powers that keep us so overcrowded and now want to give rise to ecofascism.

@@tabularasa Yes! I did a pause in my main studies last year (midwifery) which demanded a lot of academic reading and kind of had me sick of reading at the end of the day and revenge procrastinating with social media. So I did 1 year of english studies which was also filled with academic reading as you can imagine but at least there was fiction and a rich imaginary world that triggered a need for more. I now found a good balance I think, I go through phases. But I also joined a book club and participate to literary discussions at my local independent bookstore which keeps me on track! I'm also never got rid of my book shopping addiction which is now a library borrowing addiction and returning a book without having read it never feels great so I just read a lot more now :)

Great comment, thank you for this perspective

I'm speaking almost ludicrously broadly here, but it seems to me that tech-centered people tend to be stronger at adapting to things already happening as a result of decisive objective facts than they are at predicting future patterns involving nuances of human behavior, whereas marketers and financial sector people tend towards the inverse. I'm all for skepticism, of course, and I'm not taking a position on how Web3 will play out, but I lean towards assuming a little credibility on principle of whatever's said by the people whose careers depend more on guessing what humans will want than on building things humans need. Not that you implied any extreme positions with your comment or anything, just sharing what I think.

A smart watch would be overkill for me. I just now upgraded from my S9 phone to the S22 Ultra because I happened to catch a trade in deal before it ended, and this things does more than enough for what I do across most personal devices. Makes editing my photography on the go much less of a hassle. My watch is straight up analog and I love it. Social media is something I could do mostly without though.

I completely agree! This idea of quantifying myself for companies is really scary! I love having a phone I can leave in another room for hours but smart watches give me anxiety!

people who use smartwatches can be easily convinced that they need to buy literally anything imo

It's interesting to look into this quantified self that Amanda mentioned. It goes hand in hand with the "tools" created. You've touched upon it with your comment "the intuitive self". Intuition cannot be measured but the tools are all about quantifying. So inorder to capture this 'vagueness', the technologies will become more invasive to have a grasp at this "intuition". From smart watches with sensors tracking pulses, temperature and movement to the eye tracking that will accompany the virtual metaverse, these will be the new tools for data harvesting. The only thing about this data is that its nature needs to be 'measured' or quantified.

@@nataliekazful great point!!!

Good work there👏

Behold the modern human. Be scared and deeply ashamed.

Any plan is necessarily technology

wtf does that even mean

@@venusianblivet9518it is fairly obvious that by “technology” it is meant the technological system

I completely relate and appreciate your putting this experience into words

i think the reason some people like the 80s/90s so much is that tech really enhanced our lives instead of BEING our lives

I think that 2013s were great. We had computers, and smartphones. I'd stay in that era technologically. Nowadays it's just too much.

@@leilaschrof529 Depends what country tho in the 80s or 90s especially for third world countries or having a Dictator not all countries are having fun.

Thank God. The faster the left dies the better tbh, the fundamental basis with which they see the world is literal poison.

I wouldn’t say that tech is frivolous for non-disabled people, everyone has different needs and there’s a lot of use regularly abled people can get out of technology like smart watches too. The problem is that we are being taught to base our purchases around how popular or cool the tech is rather than if it suits our needs. So many people just aren’t thinking for themselves about HOW they want to use their tech, they just assume that they will get good use out of it because everyone else seems to like theirs. Technology is all just tools, we should be basing the tech we own around our individual lives and needs; instead it seems to be the other way around these days, where we let the companies dictate what tech we should buy and we tailor ourselves to make it work for us as best we can. Luckily now people are starting to wake up more and more to overconsumption in general, and also to the manipulation and mind games big tech is using against us to make more money.

@@clared5812 Thank you for making a great point about how these kinds of features can help non-disabled people too.

What ways do you think it could be harmful?

@@clared5812 I would argue that the benefits of a smartwatch often out way the negatives for many non-disabled people. Most people have their phone on them and many find the watch distracting and a waste of time and attention for its limited benefits 🤷🏻‍♀️

@@avacx smartwatches and similar ways to monitor one's body can lead to eating disorders. They can increase stress instead of relieving it. I'm way happier now that I've deleted the Samsung Health app from my phone. It was after a post by a local association for ED's made me think about health monitoring and how it can reduce our quality of life. For sure, that doesn't happen to everyone, and like was said in the original comment, these devices can help people who have disabilities and chronic illness.

That sounds like a shallow infatuation with an aesthetic as opposed to any actual intelligent understanding of the self or the world.

Just saw this comment. I'd love to hear where you're at now with your 80s journey and going back to simpler tech

With problem with tech is largely the same problem as viewers and producers of left-wing above essays: a lack of guiding, encompassing metrics tracking objective improvements to the human condition. With the differentiating factor being: big tech has that lack by design, whereas the above is by incompetence. The first builds solutions for the wrong metrics, whereas the second carpet-bombs the air with qualitative statements and "solutions" serving no metric.

@@themore-you-know The RU-vid comment section isn't where we always put our most rigorous and complete thoughts forward, it's a largely reactive social conversation. Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left, that's a big reason why the left gets called elitist all the time. The ongoing gun safety/violence conversation is a recent, concrete example of the left looking at injury/deaths per capita from gun violence and comparing the United States to other countries or even comparing how certain states have trended before/after enacting certain restrictions. The left (as well as independents and some on the right in this case) has then offered a variety of substantive legal solutions based on what the information suggests is most effective way to reduce premature death due to guns. Also, people aren’t neatly categorized as “the left” or “the right” and it’s a messy, reductive way to term a critique that is focused on rigor and objectivity. Not to be too hostile to your comment, quality data and metrics are something we should value and it’s intuitive to think that if people more genuinely root their thinking in them, we’d be coming to more constructive solutions.

@@brady9592, if "Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left", then LGBTQ and Feminism wouldn't be running the show. There are no metrics justifying having them as anything close to priorities. And environmentalism would be handled through engineering and far reaching policies, not feelings-first approaches. NOTE: I have a degree in a field of environmental sciences, and I am disgusted by how we inefficiently and with how little urgency we approach the end-all-be-all priority. I would have partially agreed with your statement, had you made it decades ago.

@@themore-you-know I agree with your disgust at how inefficiently we approach environmental issues, we differ on our analysis of the drivers and it’s not something we’re likely to bridge between us. At the very least, I hope you’re able to find an avenue to help bring about the environmental policies we so heavily lack, I’ve been working to do the same.

​@@brady9592, What are the avenues you've been working on?

You would really like japanese and Chinese zen art then. Or things closely related. That kind of art tends to focus on putting tiny human figures within a natural landscape. You can probably find modern versions of it as well in case you don't like the linework of the older stuff.

agreed! there are some great books about this, like bullshit jobs by david graeber and utopia for realists by rutger bregman. highly recommended reads

No, "muh evil corporations" is a false answer. Societies are living organisms that humans are fundamentally not in control of. A corporation is a thing, it emerges as a necessary by product of natural selection just as you did. There is no other way it can be.

To be honest, Frankenstein is more of a reflection on the limits of human nature and what happens when you cross those boundaries, but I wouldn't say it's anti-tech. She was undoubtedly questioning science, as her husband Percy was, but both of them were also fascinated by the experiments of scientists like Galvani, who tried to bring dead frogs back to life with electricity. And she wasn't a follower of the Victorian Romanticism either, she was actually close to the 2nd generation of Romantics and very much an outsider and a pioneer! It's really hard to close her in a strict definition, and I think that this is what makes her a truly relevant figure ❤️

I always read Frankenstein as an indictment of the person rather than the technology.

On a side note. Check out Work For Impact. There's a lot of jobs there that you can do on your own times.

There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.

Very off topic, but don't you think 'bucolic' is such a horrible word? It sounds like a mix between 'bubonic' and 'choleric'!

@@squidwardsthirdtentacle1198 agree, it doesn't sound like something you'd seek out!

And also a lot of people rediscovered nature because going for a walk or hike was literally the only leisure activity you were allowed to do outside your house (speaking for myself at least)

That reminds me, I recently came across this theory that LOTR is an allegory for industrialization.

@@silverroxen2954 definitely one reading that fits well.

Steady there, buddy. Being closer to nature and closer to your food ARE good things, but don't forget it is VERY difficult to completely cut yourself adrift. Here we are, communicating, of sorts, through the ether in a "magical way" on devices made by......underpaid labor of foreign workers. If you can't laugh at that, you should. I don't sense anyone here "doing a duty" on you or your opinions. Whether we are white or not (you, your Robertson name probably gives you away, Alice, and I) are likely we're all European-derived or influenced, but who cares? A Japanese farmer growing cucumbers outside Kyoto has as much inherent cachet as we do. And if he is a good steward and a good person, I call him brother. Say what you believe and do what makes you feel complete. Let the anger go. And BTW, I have NO social media accounts, but I do like to chat with thoughtful people on line, on interesting sites like this.

Yesss How to Do Nothing is amazing!!! I highly recommend Wendy Liu’s book “Abolish Silicon Valley” as well.

Always hilarious how the most anti-capitalist people ALWAYS are the most materialistic people on the planet.

@@adelrojjas Thats not the same, because to automate that, they didn’t have to steal work and individual property of others.

@@adelrojjas They did however use original works for training.

​@@xKessa tbh AI in Voice actors are just either use for fanmade animations plus it's to expensive to hire them just to do simple voices.

Ted Kaczynski was not a philosopher or futurist - he was just a mentally unstable murderer

🤣🤣

Thank you Lucy ! ✨

Oh and I love it.

@@LepiotaI have, he makes a lot of good points, but also several leaps in logic and just out write bad points. He raised some Interesting questions, but I’m still pro-technology

thats why ill become a prepper

What highly developed civilisations of the past?

@@venusianblivet9518 Wait, Wakanda isn't real?!

They achieved that industrial "development" through the exploitation of humans, whether they're exploiting the proletariat or slaves in their foreign colonies. Just want to make sure everyone knows it's not bc they were inherently better or smarter or whatever.

It *could* also just be that the people who've spent multiple family generations living in suburbs only to commute into urban areas for work are BURNT OUT from the barrage of concrete, asphalt, & strip malls - & merely need a change a pace. You all are SO EXHAUSTING with this nonsensical race-based gospel you've been brainwashed into believing. Everything doesn't always have to tie back to race. Ever heard of Occam's Razor??? With "cottage-core", it's NOT that deep.

@@kat8559 You do realize minorities (non-white races) still practice slavery today in 2022?

There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.

Yep, it is all about balance. I also think we should not fear the future.

@@Ana-ty8sl in the bigger picture I also think humanity will eventually sort their shit out, but its sad that so many people and other creatures on the planet have to suffer on the way there

Yes I love to see people talk about solar punk more! I truly believe it is the way forward with the blending of urban and nature/farming

@@happytofu5 yeah I agree. I do think perhaps there will be a future where everyone unites, but how we get there is what troubles me the most.

@@FeyPax yay for solar punk :) I love the concept

I’m not a boomer but I’m not anti tech. Social media and tech use to be big part of my life but once I established the relationship that I wanted to have with it, that stopped. Tech is a tool, all things tech are just applications and objects. Younger generations have been thrusted into a world with technology that could be used for almost anything and is also promoted as life changing so it makes sense that it is a big part our lives. It’s easy for boomers to form a laid back relationship with tech but thats not something that younger gens can’t do

thank you!!!! will read his essay! :O

Yeah. The appeal to nature and evolution as some kind of ultimate authority is one of the core tenets of fascism. Evolution is just as arbitrary as invention - we didn't ask to be born human.

Being anti-tech is just like the movie -Idiocrasy😂😂😂

It seems that the term "anti-tech" in 2022 is used to represent taking a stance against negative tech, such as genetic engineering, micro plastics, social media, etc. Yes, everything is technology, for example eyeglasses are a form of technology and transhumanism, but we aren't against technology that is helpful to us. Anti-tech mentality rejects the technology that specifically hurts us

@@tabularasa genetic engineering isn’t bad

@@robogecko4067 Yes, manipulation of genes and cross-species creation of novel organisms is famously uncontroversial 🙄 Let us pay no attention to any relevant ecological or ethical concerns, okay

Nice! What do you do?

"this content is far too rich for me to absorb it in a video" No, your confusion is genuine and the product of the video itself not containing much of any significance.