Technology

Appstinence is just one of a seemingly growing constellation of groups, mostly led by young people, advocating for reduced reliance on technology, either for one's own mental health or as a protest against powerful tech companies that have an ever-growing hold on all aspects of our lives.

I'ma be real with you. Choosing to dump technology entirely instead of learning to use it responsibly and finding things that aren't dominated by corporations looking to control us seems really short sighted and leaning into false promise of things being different at best.

It's quite like the whole Climate Change movement and how we won't do anything to constrain giant corporations or billionaires in how they impact the planet, but instead individuals (often poverty stricken) are expected to shoulder the burden through recycling programs that don't even end up recycling what those individuals take the time to sort.

It's also eerily similar to the anti-AI movement which focuses on all the most negative aspects of AI generation, ignores the benefits of locally-hosted models as opposed to giant models owned by corporations run out of energy and water hogging data-centers, and similarly ignores that the AI that consistently is a failure is general purpose AI whereas highly specialized AI is often very successful. I am by no means an AI lover, I don't use it at all in my every day life, but I think it's foolhardy to write it off entirely instead of making regulations that prevent this kind of environment-destroying investment in endless data centers for profit. Much like the Climate Change issue, it's the smallest and weakest among us shouldering the burden, making our own lives harder, while nothing materially changes and AI advances anyway.

These modern Luddites are not wrong that some aspects of the modern era are terrible, but some of the things they decry are the same things that are so beautiful about it. When I was a young person, finding LGBTQ+ or atheist groups was basically impossible without the internet. As someone who grew up in a relatively rural area, it was hard to make friends and connections even in a mostly unconnected world (I am in my forties, for reference, so I grew up in the era of CompuServe and AOL being the only "online" options). Having the internet suddenly opened me up to finding people who I could actually be open and vulnerable with, something I couldn't say was true about most of my IRL peers at the time. Returning to that, especially at a period where Christofascism is taking hold, is asking to let the Christofascists dictate how society looks and functions and removing those footholds of access for people who are queer or atheist or disabled. It returns us to an unconnected world where people suffer in silence for decades not knowing that there is nothing wrong with who they are deep down as they are regularly shamed and abused by their IRL peers for not appearing or acting the "right" way.

Especially with the likelihood of modern communication methods being clamped down upon, embracing the technology and finding ways to use it to benefit humankind instead of deciding it's all evil is the way forward. The world was, for example, a better place with Fred Rogers in it, who leveraged the technology of television, often villainized as terrible for children, as a way to connect with children and educate them in a healthy, humane, and loving way. I see shades of that type of villainization in this movement, equating screen time with being unhealthy.

All tools are able to be misused. All tools are able to be used positively. It's all in who is using those tools and what their aims and intents are. A hammer can be used to both create and destroy in positive ways in the trade of construction. A hammer can also be wielded as a violent, dangerous weapon. It all depends on whose hands it is in, and what they aim to use that tool for.

Dropping technology instead of standing for using it in positive ways will always be tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.