'Progress is a comfortable disease' (Or: Maybe the Luddites were on to something)

It's quite fascinating that in the past few years I have started to become one of Those People. It feels like I've embraced 'Old Lady Yells At Cloud' as an almost permanent state of being.

I've read a few articles about Luddites recently which have made me think. It's odd for me because I used to be such an enthusiastic and vocal advocate for the wonders of the internet. For a brief spot of time I even had a blog titled 'The Cyber-Utopian', which should be a clear indication that I haven't always been a technological skeptic. Quite the opposite. When I was younger I would spend hours online, pouring out my heart to an anonymous online journal, browsing amazing photography and artwork on sites like DeviantArt and Elfwood, having passionate discussions with people around the planet on discussion forums, and delighting in the humour and campfire-together-ness of early Twitter memes. For a while, the internet really was something that brought people together and fostered opportunities for creativity, for knowledge, for connection.

But all that came to an end when the Fire Nation attacked with The Great Enshittification.

We're all familiar with it. Algorithms force-feeding us an addictive diet of ads, influencers, AI slop and clickbait outrage. In the past few years I've realised I don't actually enjoy most of the time I spend online any more, and so I've drifted away (which has done wonders for the number of books I've been able to read this year). I just want to go live in a cabin in the woods and mostly talk to trees. Welcome to grumpy middle-age, I guess.

 ~

About 15 years ago I remember my Gran asking me if I thought that when I was her age (80-something), did I think that I would still be totally up to date and confident with the modern technology of the day. I laughed and told her of course not. Little did I know just how quickly I'd find myself on the technological outside.

(It's not that I don't understand how generative AI works or how to use it. I'm an information professional; it's literally my job. In fact, a recent 5-hour AI training program for work was the thing that finally made me snap and put up a statement about AI on my About Me page.)

When I was a teenager Mum used to comment about how I spent hours on MSN messenger chatting to my friends. She used to be confused and annoyed by this, until one day, standing in the door of my bedroom, she paused and said "...Well, I guess when I was your age my friends and I used to talk on the phone for hours. I suppose instant messaging is kind of the same thing." And after this realisation she never complained about it again.

Perhaps every generation felt the same way in their day as I do now. But I would argue that the experience of the internet these days, with all of its bots and garbage content, is not simply a new way of doing an old thing. It's something entirely different, something that devalues all of the things that used to be important. And I just don't want to engage with it any more.

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A little while ago on a non-descript workday I was sitting in the campus courtyard and eating lunch when my eye settled on a young student. They were sitting cross-legged on a bench, baggy pants and sneakers and over-sized headphones, working intently on the laptop resting on their knees. They were surrounded by greenery and the sun was shining gently down on them.

It was something about the combination of youth, learning, green and growing things, and technology all seamless together. Imagine what it would be like, I thought with sudden longing, to live in a world with an optimistic future. Not a perfect world, a world that still had its problems; but a world that's full of hope, that's moving in the right direction.

The longing that I felt forced me to realise that we don't live in a world like that at the moment. We could, I'm not saying it's impossible. But currently, we don't.

It makes me think of this e.e. cummings poem. "Progress is a comfortable disease', but:

listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; lets go