Weren't those a thing to admire? Chicken scratches on the ground could be more readable.

Luddites got a bad rap from capitalists. The Luddites were not anti-technology, they were against technology destroying people’s jobs. Their whole thing was destroying industrial machinery and sabotaging factories because they were replacing human labor without any alternative in place for the actual people. Hundreds of thousands of people were turned off the land, unemployed, and starving because of greedy capitalists trying to not pay for labor.

If the same people were around today, they’d be trying to blow up AI server farms.

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I'm going to take a risk and say you write faster than you type

I have a very hard time believing this. From some quick googling, it seems that experienced writers can do 40 wpm, which is really slow in comparison to an (even an inexperienced) typer. Also, typing has no risk of being unreadable, unlike writing (e.g. doctor's written notes).

and reaching for a pencil is quicker than launching a program.

Maybe if your computer is really slow.

It was a long time ago I watched an DVD, but I very clearly remember some of them having unskippable ads.

Why self-host messaging when there are so many good options?

Big tech does have consent. They hide it in the TOS that hardly anyone reads.

Technology can develop in various directions. This is exactly what it looks like when technology is developed for consumerism. Buy more now, it doesn't need to last, stimulate the economy. Rent what you can, everything else as a service.

Those things can feasibly be better. I pay the delivery human with anonymous cash once I've got my order. The store has my stuff ready to go right now. The taxi is right here and they're unionized.

Can't dispute file sharing though, analog copies suck.

All my friends chat over our self hosted matrix server. There is always a way.

i wonder whether we will have to seize the means of computer chip production as well ...

I must be imagining all the Governors in the northern states begging us Canadians to start visiting again. Voting with you wallet does work if enough people get on board.

i think these a microprocessors though? no internet access for them.

You’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t think it makes sense either even if I’m a (moderate) self-hosting guy.

I've been wanting to convert my life to "off grid tech". I have a nest camera i bought in 2016. So it's pre Google. Starting about 6 months ago, Google told me unless I allow them full 24/7 access to the cam then I can't use it. A product i bought almost a decade ago is useless unless I let them spy on me. Fuck you Google.

So anyways, off grid tech. Home surveillance on my own local server protected with physical data and VPN. No more streaming, pirate everything with local server. No more Google or Amazon anything. Music? Mp3. Email? No Gmail, maybe Proton or something. I'll do all banking through home desktop through VPN. Etc, etc.

I hope to have all these things achieved by 2030

There is something to be said in writing a handwritten letter for someone special once in a while. But I'm so glad that I can just pick up a phone and call my brother who lives in another state and chat with him (no long distance charges). If it's something better said in writing there's email and texts.

There's also the aspect of text's that are more personal that no one really talks about. You can just check in on a friend to see how they are doing without really having any other reason to contact them. I know I appreciate it when that happens to me.

I guess you could write someone a letter asking how they are doing, but if the answer is 'not good', by the time you receive the reply days have passed and you probably missed the opportunity to be there for them when they needed it.

This isn't even considering the environmental benefits of not having to A) produce paper, pens, envelopes, stamps and B) physically deliver the letters.

There's a lot of things about modern tech that you could criticize, but I don't think more/better options for communication is one of them honestly.

I’ll have to do the same with music and get my iPod battery fixed up if I can.

In the meantime you can just load music files onto your phone and play them that way.

For email, I recommend purelymail. It's ran by one guy I believe, but it's a solid cheap service. It's also pretty easy to setup your own email domains. I'm probably just a nerd, but I love custom email domains.

Of course we would.

Usually those middlemen don't open up your mail, read what you wrote, then serve you ads based on that.