In defense of my technophobia
Alright I admit it, I'm a technophobe
Being a programmer, I was surprised the first few times I was told by close friends / family I’m the most technophobic person they knew. But, after examining the evidence and introspecting a bit, I have to agree - I really am (to some extent) a technophobe.
Don’t get me wrong - I love what I do (most of the time), I’m grateful for the almost magical things technology enables me to do, and I’m generally excited and optimistic about the potential of technology to make the world a better place.
But. I’m always suspicious of new tech, take my sweet time migrating to new devices (my phone is 8 years old), stick to my habits for a long time before adopting the latest payment method or whatever gizmo is hot, and generally opt for as low-tech solutions as possible.
Sure, part of that can be attributed to my natural laziness and stubbornness. But I do think I have a few points in my defense: (not that there have to be, I can be grumpy if I want to)
- Fragility: from the left-pad fiasco, through personal projects that suffered untimely, inexlicable bit-rot, to seemingly innocent commits I made that somehow messed up everything, I know just how fragile technology can be. The more routine activities are digitized, the more I depend on my device and the app’s reliability. What if it’s out of battery? Or there’s no reception? How bad would the impact of a crash be? Tragically, just as more aspects of life become digital, so does the competitive pressure on such products increase, pushing edge cases and lateral considerations to the sidelines.
- Wrestling-with-tech fatigue: all programmers know the dreaded feeling of the realization that what you thought would be a 5-minute setup is rapidly devolving into a soul-devouring rabbit hole.
After enough of those you get spidey senses for problems that seem simple but might just be hiding a monster in the closet.
And I hate fighting such monsters outside of work.
After spending 8 hours in front of a screen debugging and troubleshooting, I just want to go outside, listen to music and get some exercise. Oops, guess what? Your comfy bluetooth earbuds won’t pair! OK, no worries, do a reset. Now only one pairs?! Go watch troubleshooting videos and read manufacturer manuals. The joy… - I use technology in my life for specific purposes, but some tech products seem unsatisified with the side-kick role and put themselves in the center instead.
Pop-up notifications in the middle of the night? Antivirus “alerts” that I could save 2GB if I just switched to the paid tier, out of the blue while I’m watching a movie? Attention-hungry platforms that are optimized to take as much of my time as they can?
No thanks, I’ll pass. - Other companies indeed treat technology as a means to an end - but to what end? I’m jaded with companies using technology to improve profit margins while offering worse products with no customizability or support.
Worse yet are companies using tech as an enabler (and accountability sink) for doing morally questionable stuff.
Whew! That got heavy. If anything, writing this post makes me feel even more justified in my technophobia.
That said, if you’ll excuse me, I do think it’s finally time to get a new phone…