We are surrounded by technology, and it can become a bit overwhelming at times.

We feel the urge to learn about new techs, because that’s what everybody is talking about right now – and we don’t want to fall behind and become outdated.

And we feel the fear of some of those new technologies, because they obviously aren’t as kind and giving as the vendor claims – or maybe they are, but with a catch.

There’s in general a catch to everything in tech. If it’s useful in one way, it will cost you on some other account. The price can be money, or freedom, or it can be a more long-term effect of yourself losing the skills that the tech now takes over.

Subscribe now

Guidance

That’s why we seek more information about everything. It is mostly not clear from the first look at it, if you will benefit from a specific product or service.

And we see more and more warnings: some products are, apparently, not good for us at all. Especially the Big Tech companies seem to have entered a mood where they openly steal your data and use them for whatever they want – whatever they can make money on.

Another problem is data security, with data breaches every other moment bringing what you thought were your personal, confidential, data into the hands of criminals – or just displayed publicly by the company you trusted to keep them safe, by some kind of weird mistake.

And we get increasingly aware that being connected isn’t just about having access to everything and everyone, it is also about everything and everyone having access to you, through your data.

Technology is very much about data. The days are gone where you could have a typewriter that simply printed a character when you pressed a button, and that was that. Now, there will be a recording somewhere of what you pressed, what was printed, and on what material, and the recording will include a lot of information about time, date, who wrote it, how long they took to do it, how often they do something similar, and what else they are doing in their life.

In modern times, you don’t have control of what you tell others. As a basic rule, everything that exists, everything that happens, will result in data being registered somewhere, and shared with people and technology that you don’t even know of.

If is not wrong to talk about the current concept of society as a surveillance society.

It doesn’t take camera’s on every street corner to get there – we are already under surveillance by all the other technologies we use.

Inspiration

Not all technology is bad technology. Far from it! Think about the many people who literally get saved by a bell, when a machine of some kind at the hospital will ensure that help is provided when needed.

Mechanisms of all sorts in modern cars can help prevent accidents, or help you stay more safe and get less hurt in case an accident does happen.

The Internet is full of things you can do, that will teach and train you, help you do your shopping, banking, tax reporting, or other daily chores in ways that will save you time, and sometimes also money.

And you can read an article like this one, without first hearing about a book of articles being published, then going to a bookstore to hear if they can get it, and then waiting for a while until they call and tell that now they have it home.

It is not all good, and often there is a Yin-Yang situation built-into all new technologies and ideas, as you may win something, but it comes with some drawbacks as well.

Nevertheless, new technologies can be interesting to hear about, so that you can make a choice of what to do. And also, new alternatives – not necessarily new inventions, just another take on how to do it or which conditions to offer, can be just what you need to hear about. A new email program and service, for instance, if you are unhappy with the one you have. That’s old technology, but the new approach to it can potentially cure the worries you have with the old one.

Warnings

Among all the technologies out there – all the software, hardware, services – and their connected business ideas and changes to the way we live, there are some that will be seen as an improvement to many, but perhaps not to all. And there will be some that are definitely no improvement to anybody, if you just pay attention to what they really are.

Think about cigarettes, that may originally have been a low-level technology not considered problematic, by some, but which nevertheless turned into killing millions of people and making even more millions terribly ill. The side-effects, such as using farming land for producing tobacco instead of the food that was more needed locally, just made the whole thing worse.

Or what about the computer mouse, that was meant to be an easier way of navigating and using a computer, but has causes many cases of “tennis elbow” – sometimes with resulting operations or severe limitations in how people could use their hands and arms after the damage had occurred.

And in the data spheres, all the abuse of personal data can make it difficult to live a normal, free life – putting you in a situation where you must censure yourself to avoid being harassed by other users on social media platforms, or indeed, to avoid being thrown out of the platforms or brought in the search light of governmental intelligence organizations or criminal organizations. Not because you say something illegal or evil, but just because some arbitrarily set rules of the platforms require that you are only a 10% “you”, keeping whatever other thoughts you might have about the world for yourself. This could be opinions about the current state leader, for instance, or thoughts about religion, humanity, society, and politics in a broad perspective.

Data privacy is a large topic with most services today – “who will get your personal data?” shouldn’t be necessary to ask, yet, it always is – but also the availability of data has become an issue: where you some years ago might experience that a diskette couldn’t be read and your data on it were lost, then you can today be at risk of having all your data safely put in a fully backed up cloud account, that you just can’t get access to – either for the simple reason that you forgot the password, or for some more advanced reasons, that can include almost anything, including that a foreign government puts restrictions on the datacenter, the communication, or even on your data specifically.

And, of course, for the hardware: can it be repaired if it breaks? Will it stop working, all of a sudden, because the vendor want’s to push you into buying a new piece of gear instead of using the old one for as long as it could potentially last?

Many products and services have problems like these built-into them.

We need to hear about such things, so that we can take them into account.

A world of promotions

I find it difficult to source good information about products and services on the Internet – because almost everything is put there for the purpose of making you buy something, or for someone to get a commission if they can make you click on a link.

That’s the kind of economy that drives the Internet now, and Substack is no exception. Even if there are many stacks that can be read for free, the main concept is to make readers pay for the stacks they want to read.

Next to that, affiliate links and paid contents may not tell you the true story about something, but instead a positive story that will make you buy into a world that is not there for you, but for the vendors.

We have to look at this world from all sides, I think, because if nobody can earn money on the Internet, there will be no drive and enthusiasm, and the Internet will fade. When affiliate marketing was invented, that made it possible for enthusiasts to justify paying for a web hosting account and some plugins for their content management system, etc., and run their writing business as such – a business. That kept them going. Many other initiatives died out because people lost the motivation along the way.

On the other hand, the readers must get something useful out of it. While they can’t expect the site owners to know about every thinkable product, meaning that these therefore must pick a few that they can talk about with more insight, I still think that the readers must be able to expect that there is real and honest experience and insight behind the words. So, even if there is an affiliate link, it should not mean that the text is automatically 100% untrustworthy advertising copy.

I have decided to seek and accept affiliations with some companies that I feel are right, regarding products and services that I truly can recommend. But I will write what I think, also if it may be seen as negative for the product, and I will also write about and potentially recommend other products as well.

My goal with this Substack is not mainly to promote one or another product, but to help you, the reader, find a way forward in what has become a tough technological environment.

There are values behind each word, and any recommendation can be seen as a genuine attempt to make you aware of a way to improve your use of tech, to become in line with those values.

And, my values regarding tech are a bit old-fashioned, I must admit. I am not automatically a fan of everything new. Often, I can see that something we had before was better in some ways – hence, the “welcome back” sign in the window: We sometimes benefit from taking a step back when it comes to technology. Not always, but selectively now and then.

Articles here will not always be about products or services, but can also be about how we behave and what it leads to. Regarding tech, of course, but still, there is a significant human element in everything that happens to us humans, and that’s also interesting to consider – it’s not all about tech.

And I did it! I managed to write this introduction without saying AI a single time :)