at the end of the day for me it isn't much about anti-tech... it's more about anti-profit-centered tech... (mainly social networks and how most of AI and algorithms are set to work)
It has to be about the profit, otherwise there is no incentive to invest millions of your own money to get out new products. The profit incentive is not the problem, the real problem is that it's disruptive for user's psychology and spreads misinformation. So they should focus on pushing out actual useful products and they can still get their money for doing so.
@@Leonhart_93 that’s what used to happen before the advent of social media, big tech figured out that selling actual tools that benefit your average human is far less profitable than tapping into our inherent desire to feel engaged, amused, etcetera. The problem is the profit incentive. We wouldn’t have platforms with exploitative algorithms otherwise. We are the commodity, the product, because big tech makes money by using their algorithms to keep us engaged and selling our data to the highest bidder(for advertising purposes). The process is so entrenched in the industry that the general public may never escape its effects.
@@puppetman1086 That's how it is for now, since most haven't figured out the honey trap they are in. But I am sure there will be big anti social media and anti zombification movements in the future. They could capitalize on that and make profit by offering us products that would help with the addiction.
I was a teenager in 2003-2008 and it was perfect, right in the middle. Social media addiction is no joke and people building a fake persona on social media and finding real life boring is very concerning.
I was a teenager in 1856 and let me tell you there then the balance was optimal. I was a teenager in 2019 and let me tell you then everything was great even though this is just a faulty memory and not reflective of the actual experiences that were happening I was a teenager in 2135 and my IQ is 70 and that was the best time to be alive.
i realized my mental health episodes were severely impacted by certain types of tech, and also i can observe my use of certain technologies as a way to understand if my mental health is moving in a negative direction. nuance in everything. there's a useful organization in the US called ATTRA or appropriate technology transfer to rural areas... what's interesting is that in rural US we are still using dial up internet!
I agree. I've worked in Tech 25 years. When I started in the industry the commoditization of everything hadn't started. I find the weaponisation against us through the use of psychology the worst part of how things have progressed. Instead of it being used for the good of humanity it supports the wealth accumulation for a few.
@@rachelbrian8602 psychology is a speudo-science based on observing patterns in culturalised individuals. get out of your mind and you can't be controlled. as long as fear guides your life, you're owned.
This is a great point! I used to work for a home health care company that marketed itself based on the fact that both caregivers and clients/clients’ families had designated apps. The app was helpful for caregivers to share charting notes with each other and clients, but it was terrible at assigning caregivers. If they had only used the app for things like charting and done the caregiver matching manually it would have been much better.
When you have an honest love for technology, you dont love the technology itself, but the benefits it creates. Even though Social media, hype corps like Tesla, smart everything, commercial space flight and 1000 ways to track your fitness are all technologies, I dont love them but despise them. They are not designed to improve lifes. Their sole purpose is the financial gain of the inventor and manipulation of the user.
As a child who was often in the care of her grandparents at the village, I would say that cottagecore seems to be purely for aesthetic points. I would like to see them roll in mud, work in the garden, tan from exhausting work under the sun, cook with homegrown food only. Their is a true beauty in the life they’re trying to aesthetically portray, but it’s in the sheer hard work people have to put up with, the plants they grow, real life connections they make etc. And I’m not sure they realise it. But maybe that’s just the way I see it.
I have to agree with you, I’ve being working on a market garden for the last 6 months and it’s really hard physical work but having a sense of really tight knit community and being satisfied with what you have done after the day is over and being able to really see what you have produced. I think that the reach for the aesthetic is trying to reclaim that sense of community and lack of alienation of work which unfortunately a lot of people have lost in their lives.
As a South American ~country girl~ it's so funny seeing people on the cottagecore community that never spent a day working in a farm and portray it like it's stardew valley or something
Maybe they just want to portray it in a nice way. I have a garden, which at some points provides my family most of the fruits and a good portion of vegetables. I've had so much fruit that I had to freeze it. Currently trying to eat or use all of our mandarins. I don't have enough space to grow more yet, but we have chickens, ducks and quails too. I plan on moving somewhere with more space so I can grow more - I don't feel anywhere near challenged enough yet, most days I wish I had more jobs to do in the garden. Most days all I do is water my seedlings or harvest. A lot of days it does feel blissful and peaceful like they portray in the aesthetic. Sometimes it's the only thing keeping me relaxed and happy when I have a lot of study to do for uni. From my experience the cottagecore aesthetic is pretty accurate. I don't think it has to portray all the frustrations that come with it (like the chickens escaping and eating all your seedlings), some things can just be nice.
I'm really digging the work of The Centre for Humane Technology (and their podcast Your Undivided Attention). Essentially they are saying that tech is being programmed to exploit limbic system and hold our attention. Every app is designed to get us to use it more, where apps could be designed to enhance other aspects of our life and not maximize our screen time. So long as all the big players are driven by profits, it's going to be an uphill battle with tech.
that's a fantastic perspective on our current relationship with technology, it's so frustrating on how much tech could TRULY help us but instead suck away so much of our happiness by getting us hooked on short term dopamine fixes and the constant bombardment of tragedy in our world. i feel like if our society wasn't so hyper capitalistic and profit focused, tech wouldn't consume our lives as it does now and it would enhance our lives instead of being our lives.
@@leilaschrof529 I mostly use TH-cam for people playing different fighting games/Horror stories or how to you know how to download pirated movies/music/ and games 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’m not anti-tech, I’m anti-social media and unnecessary technology. It’s hard to look at social media, and at the people I love who use it and see them suffering because of it and not want it to end. How disconnected everyone has become, the way it’s made us view each other and the world around us is incredibly unhealthy. I don’t care if someone’s life is genuinely made better by technology, personally mine never fails to be worse with it so I choose to use it as little as possible. In fact TH-cam is a form of mental self harm for me so I shouldn’t even be here right now.
If you are still on youtube and receive a notification for my comment, there is actually a way to turn off comment notifications! That helped me a lot. I try my best to stay off social media as much as I can but it is hard. I think tbh it plays a role in causing depression and makes people angry and bitter.
I know it's said a lot how tiny younger people's attention span is, but I really can't stress enough how much I hate the lack of attention span I really have thanks to tech, specifically social media. If I ever want to sit down and enjoy something simple without too much stimulation, it gets extremely boring and unbearable, and then I go right back to scrolling aimlessly through reddit. Anyway, I watched this video yesterday and today I decided to go to the side of a highway (there's a neglected bike trail there and there's no good public park close by) and just watch the cars go by while listening to a local baseball game on a transistor radio. That was it. Some of the things that I find hard to do thanks to my terrible attention span are reading, watching tv shows, playing single-player video games, or watching a baseball game without going on my phone. I want to enjoy these things more, and I think all of that would make my life more interesting than whatever I've got going on now. I wanted to be outside for the whole game, but unfortunately due to circumstances I could only be out for just under an hour. It was a pleasant experience though, one I'll try to do more this summer now that the weather is nice. This night though I ended up, well, spending most of my time scrolling through reddit.
I guess I am anti-tech the way some people are flexitarians haha. More seriously, my tendency to have some "drastic" and active anti-tech behaviours is based on necessity (No screens at least one evening/week, no scrolling before bed, no podcast or listening to music when in a quiet outdoor place). I am neurodivergent and I've noticed the constant stimulation one gets from social media and various apps greatly contributes to my brain's restlessness. I grab my phone and it's like I'm on train tracks: facebook stop, emails, then instagram and lastly, the blackhole that tiktok is. I didn't get any social media before 18, I used to read a ton and go to bed early. Now I get ear worms from tiktok sounds and instead on hyperfixations on a book character and reading said book several times I will go through 3 months of my youtube history to look for a comment in a video. In a way, I feel like longing and romanticizing a "tech-less" time is a way to reconnect with our tech-less selves, usually our childhood. Except we don't know how to do anymore. Because even when it's harmful, even when it creates or nurtures unhealthy behaviours the way we now live have us constantly stimulated. So we need some sort of tutorial, something that makes the silence, the simplicity, the "loneliness" extra appealing after years of demonizing. That's where the flowery linen clothes and picnic baskets come into play. The only representation we tend to have of solitude and just taking time to think, look, enjoy your own company is usually stained with negativity. It comes across as boredom, loneliness and the mental image you get of it is just ...a blank. So joining a movement as the anti-tech movement, or embracing an aesthetic gives the person means of representation, conceptualisation, of painting a positive and collective picture of what is often seen as time to be filled instead of experienced.
Thank you for sharing this. Well written, and illuminating. I personally feel that solitude is bliss, but I very much appreciate your perspective here, and the described connection of the cottagecore/ anti-tech movement. It makes sense. I still love letters and landlines, myself. 😊 I am curious-- have you gone back to being a bookworm, or do you have any desire to do so?
But, do not be fast to discard the important ethic of leaving the cities, they are death upon earth. Do give a closer look to Max Neef's human scaled development and Calhoun's lost papers. Maybe even the Agnotological powers that keep us so overcrowded and now want to give rise to ecofascism.
@@tabularasa Yes! I did a pause in my main studies last year (midwifery) which demanded a lot of academic reading and kind of had me sick of reading at the end of the day and revenge procrastinating with social media. So I did 1 year of english studies which was also filled with academic reading as you can imagine but at least there was fiction and a rich imaginary world that triggered a need for more. I now found a good balance I think, I go through phases. But I also joined a book club and participate to literary discussions at my local independent bookstore which keeps me on track! I'm also never got rid of my book shopping addiction which is now a library borrowing addiction and returning a book without having read it never feels great so I just read a lot more now :)
I'm so glad to have watched this video because you could put into words a feeling that I've been having: the right to intimacy. I keep asking myself: why do we need to share everything online? Don't we have the right to have our own thoughts and just BE with them? Another tech item that's gotten my attention is also the smartwatch. I always have the feeling that if I buy one my body will become a factory where everything can be assessed, and improved, and most of the time we just need to... LIVE! The idea of being invaded describes entirely my feeling towards this. Right now, I'm only using watches for their original purpose: to check the time! As always, another great video, thanks Alice!
A smart watch would be overkill for me. I just now upgraded from my S9 phone to the S22 Ultra because I happened to catch a trade in deal before it ended, and this things does more than enough for what I do across most personal devices. Makes editing my photography on the go much less of a hassle. My watch is straight up analog and I love it. Social media is something I could do mostly without though.
I completely agree! This idea of quantifying myself for companies is really scary! I love having a phone I can leave in another room for hours but smart watches give me anxiety!
It's interesting to look into this quantified self that Amanda mentioned. It goes hand in hand with the "tools" created. You've touched upon it with your comment "the intuitive self". Intuition cannot be measured but the tools are all about quantifying. So inorder to capture this 'vagueness', the technologies will become more invasive to have a grasp at this "intuition". From smart watches with sensors tracking pulses, temperature and movement to the eye tracking that will accompany the virtual metaverse, these will be the new tools for data harvesting. The only thing about this data is that its nature needs to be 'measured' or quantified.
The Luddites weren't *really* anti tech per sé... Rather they were opposed to the ways that factory owners used technological advancements at the expense the livelihoods of workers, and wanted the benefits of automation to be more equitably shared to improve the living and working conditions of ordinary people. There were some factory owners who offered benefits such as education, retraining, or better hours to their employees, and their machinery went untouched. They were really an early "progressive industrial" movement in many ways. The view of them as regressive anti-technology reactionaries was really nothing more than propaganda put out by business and the government of the day to dismiss their concerns and justify cracking down on them. Propaganda so effective that we still today use the term "Luddite" to describe someone who is anti tech.
It’s interesting how their motives have been twisted to be aligned with people like the unibomber, who was unanimously anti-tech conceptually. The Luddites actually seemed to have quite reasonable concerns and demands, based on concrete conditions of their life and the future, as opposed to an innate hate of what is new, different, or “unnatural”
Great explanation. In this sense it wouldn't hurt for all of us to be demand we partake in the benefits of technological advancements, if people are living worse and unhappier then that isn't progress.
So what's the point of life then? If we were to have a progressive tax code to fund more programs so people will not despise the system we currently live in...that seems like social democracy. It seems like you're saying, "We criticize certain aspects of the system, but we're not cringe regressive reactionaries." You have to grapple with the Unabomber's manifesto. Violence aside, what is actually wrong with his predictions? He was influenced by Jacques Ellul, who was an anarchist. Capitalism, statist repression, and environmental degradation are linked together.
I completely agree, and I also think it kind of contributed to us having trouble to deal with the complexity and contradiction that's inherently human. I'm a Brazilian and right now the collectiveness is so sensitive that there isn't any espace to embrace differences and contradiction. Right now it's a gigantic battle of us x them.
@@alicelond yes yes yes (sim? portuguesa aqui rs). I've grown up mostly online and I've seen how people are continually mocked and "cancelled" for the smallest things (not talking about actual harassment here, just differing opinions or ways of life). Like people just don't know how to deal with conflict. Everyone has a scorched earth approach these days - maybe it's the last resort, when the powers that be have refused to listen to people's legitimate concerns for decades, all because they'd rather be put to sleep by the sweet lullaby of more profit. I had to figure it out on my own because the education I got was "if you're one of the good ones, you don't need to worry". But there is no "good ones" - just different sides fighting for moral superiority. I promise there really isn't, even if you're a self-sacrificing priest, even if your core ideas are all about love and peace and housing for all. You are still fighting, you are still on one side, and of course you're going to get defensive about it. Interpersonal and political conflict requires a tact and patience that we simply forego nowadays, because it's more profitable to "dunk" your opponent, or cancel them, or use identity politics to pull the rug from under their feet. It makes you more popular and richer, therefore closer to victory. Even at an interpersonal level, I always think an argument is the end of a relationship instead of something that's natural. I feel like raising my voice is inherently abusive and "narcissistic" because of all the shit people talk about online. Yes, we need to defend victims, yes, we need to raise awareness, but awareness should not be paranoia. I'm paranoid every time I disagree with someone because what if that's the final straw for them? Just some more paranoid rambling here, ofc. There are people who are not like this and I've found them and need to stick to them, because the other option is to simply annihilate myself out of existence.
@@kawaiixtc I felt the same things you've just described with Twitter! Every time I read something, I'd feel as if every complaint or wrong-doing was mine, and this lead me to great levels of anxiety. It's funny to realize how we're not simply machines who can separate different instances of our lives (this reminded me of the show Severance, btw), and the stimulus we receive online affect directly the way we interact with each other. It gives me a certain comfort to read your comment and to know that someone with a totally different background has the same feelings towards this. My personal solution nowadays involves a very difficult effort to embrace the complexity and that every single one of us WILL make mistakes, but this doesn't mean we're not worthy.
@@kawaiixtc You are one smart person in this world. I feel that a lot of people simply do not respect others´opinion. There is a lack of empathy from everyone nowadays and they want to make everything political. I literally stopped hanging out with a friends in fears that she would get me cancelled because I do not share the same point of view as hers. I do understand hers but she will never understand mine and I dont think its fair plus I even try to not talk about these topics but shes constantly bringing them up:(
All of the crypto-libertarian nonsense is indeed bad, but there is a significant lack of discussion and debate on the left regarding what we want our relationship with technology to look like going forward. There are beginnings of a “slow tech” movement, and the open source software movement is indeed essential for the future of our digital communities, but only a small number of people are really promoting these ideas and framing their importance in a way that nontechnical people can easily understand and put into practice. As much as I love the kind of commentary that Alice and others offer on these issues, I can’t help but feel that there’s too much discussion on the left and too little action. We’re so focused on critique but spend much less time contemplating the truly essential questions of how to translate ideas into action.
I'm speaking almost ludicrously broadly here, but it seems to me that tech-centered people tend to be stronger at adapting to things already happening as a result of decisive objective facts than they are at predicting future patterns involving nuances of human behavior, whereas marketers and financial sector people tend towards the inverse. I'm all for skepticism, of course, and I'm not taking a position on how Web3 will play out, but I lean towards assuming a little credibility on principle of whatever's said by the people whose careers depend more on guessing what humans will want than on building things humans need. Not that you implied any extreme positions with your comment or anything, just sharing what I think.
I very much think simplifying my life after the pandemic hit was a nudge in the right direction, and I think cutting extremely back on social media was one of the healthiest things I’ve ever done in my life. But I still enjoy many many aspects of not only tech, but social media itself. Especially as someone queer living in rural areas. So it’s just a constant struggle to find the perfect balance. I’m definitely not anti tech, but it’s become really important to me personally to cut back and focus on being more present in my own life
The quote of the end of the video really struck me. I’m a high school teacher and the “requirement to speak” is so forceful all day for my students. If you’re not careful, students feel pressured to speak even when they have nothing to say. I try hard to give students time to think and slow down discussion. I notice more thoughtful comments, from a broader range of people, and it definitely has a significant impact on their mental state.
I don't know if I am anti technology, but i am definitely anti the way I can't seem to concentrate on anything if I have my social media accounts activated... Or how I need my computer more than I need water for my job, or how I'm lost without my phone... I also hate the fact that whenever my depression starts acting up, it's when I use technology the most to get a little bit of something in my life. I often find myself wishing I had lived these years i am currently living in an earlier period of time, early enough to not have computers and mobile phones and social media, but not so early that color tv isn't a thing. Kind of like the 80s and 90s.
@@leilaschrof529 Depends what country tho in the 80s or 90s especially for third world countries or having a Dictator not all countries are having fun.
My opinion on tech is that we should ALWAYS have a back up plan. We do not know the future and it is important not to put all our eggs in the same basket
Author of the video: “White people can easily detach from what is happening in the world” Me as a Ukrainian, who is living for the last 100+ days in a state of war: OK 👌🏻
What I find interesting is that smartwatches, a technology that I agree is frivolous or even harmful for most non-disabled people, is life changing for many people like me. My watch can detect if I fall and call an ambulance and monitors my heart rate, helping me track how well my medications are working. Unfortunately tech companies can make much more money by getting people to use them to obsessively check the text messages than they can from improving the lives of people like me.
I wouldn’t say that tech is frivolous for non-disabled people, everyone has different needs and there’s a lot of use regularly abled people can get out of technology like smart watches too. The problem is that we are being taught to base our purchases around how popular or cool the tech is rather than if it suits our needs. So many people just aren’t thinking for themselves about HOW they want to use their tech, they just assume that they will get good use out of it because everyone else seems to like theirs. Technology is all just tools, we should be basing the tech we own around our individual lives and needs; instead it seems to be the other way around these days, where we let the companies dictate what tech we should buy and we tailor ourselves to make it work for us as best we can. Luckily now people are starting to wake up more and more to overconsumption in general, and also to the manipulation and mind games big tech is using against us to make more money.
@@clared5812 I would argue that the benefits of a smartwatch often out way the negatives for many non-disabled people. Most people have their phone on them and many find the watch distracting and a waste of time and attention for its limited benefits 🤷🏻♀️
@@avacx smartwatches and similar ways to monitor one's body can lead to eating disorders. They can increase stress instead of relieving it. I'm way happier now that I've deleted the Samsung Health app from my phone. It was after a post by a local association for ED's made me think about health monitoring and how it can reduce our quality of life. For sure, that doesn't happen to everyone, and like was said in the original comment, these devices can help people who have disabilities and chronic illness.
I'm not anti-tech, especially in the regressive backwards-looking sense, and I at the same time have some deep reservations about the promise of tech driven by venture capital and maximizing profit. At the very least, it seems to me that too much of tech is developed (basically) unmittigatedly in the name of profit and as a consequence is doing its best work for investors and executives. In the worst-case, not getting a more intentional, regulated grip on technology pushes humanity into greater and greater destabilization, and best-case, it robs us of the real benefit and better world that it would otherwise bring. Three cheers for a future of improvements to properly regulate technology and get greater public ownership over its development and benefits. Edit: Side note: On the subject of over-stimulation, I've gotten to the point where owning a CRT tv and playing retro games in the evening on a warm, low-nit screen that is not connected to the internet feels like a form of unplugging. Take that for what it is, just a strange self-observation, lol.
With problem with tech is largely the same problem as viewers and producers of left-wing above essays: a lack of guiding, encompassing metrics tracking objective improvements to the human condition. With the differentiating factor being: big tech has that lack by design, whereas the above is by incompetence. The first builds solutions for the wrong metrics, whereas the second carpet-bombs the air with qualitative statements and "solutions" serving no metric.
@@themore-you-know The TH-cam comment section isn't where we always put our most rigorous and complete thoughts forward, it's a largely reactive social conversation. Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left, that's a big reason why the left gets called elitist all the time. The ongoing gun safety/violence conversation is a recent, concrete example of the left looking at injury/deaths per capita from gun violence and comparing the United States to other countries or even comparing how certain states have trended before/after enacting certain restrictions. The left (as well as independents and some on the right in this case) has then offered a variety of substantive legal solutions based on what the information suggests is most effective way to reduce premature death due to guns. Also, people aren’t neatly categorized as “the left” or “the right” and it’s a messy, reductive way to term a critique that is focused on rigor and objectivity. Not to be too hostile to your comment, quality data and metrics are something we should value and it’s intuitive to think that if people more genuinely root their thinking in them, we’d be coming to more constructive solutions.
@@brady9592, if "Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left", then LGBTQ and Feminism wouldn't be running the show. There are no metrics justifying having them as anything close to priorities. And environmentalism would be handled through engineering and far reaching policies, not feelings-first approaches. NOTE: I have a degree in a field of environmental sciences, and I am disgusted by how we inefficiently and with how little urgency we approach the end-all-be-all priority. I would have partially agreed with your statement, had you made it decades ago.
@@themore-you-know I agree with your disgust at how inefficiently we approach environmental issues, we differ on our analysis of the drivers and it’s not something we’re likely to bridge between us. At the very least, I hope you’re able to find an avenue to help bring about the environmental policies we so heavily lack, I’ve been working to do the same.
I first got into the idea of removing modern technology from my life because I'm a bit of an 80s recreationalist. I'm only 20 years old but at the moment I'm working on transitioning to an 80s-style wardrobe and decorating my room to match. I enjoy the idea of having nothing more than a VCR, cassette tapes, vinyls and maybe a computer for emails. Planning on getting a dumb phone for phone calls only. If people really want to get in touch they'll text me or email. I don't care so much about nature, but I do care about having a free mind. I enjoy books, drawing, music, singing, dancing, and other stuff that really doesn't require modern tech. These are my hobbies, they're not necessarily done for an audience. I like the idea of choosing when people can see me. I dislike the idea of having my health stats, interests, and consumer habits being tracked every moment of every day. That information can easily be exploited, despite the "disclaimers" and "t's & c's" that people do or do not read. I also now only deal in cash, where possible - I've had too much security and glitching issues for me to enjoy online banking anymore. Once I've gathered all my favourite cassettes and purchased a walkman, I won't have any need for Spotify. Once I have a VCR and a compatible TV, I can get rid of Disney+ and Netflix and just watch tapes instead. And having access to less media will make me less likely to binge-watch shows and movies, and will encourage me to slow down as rewatching the same stuff constantly will soon get boring. Instead I'll be more likely to choose my non-tech hobbies. Let's at the very least keep tech as an accessory, not a necessity, to life.
Thank you. Finally I don't feel alone with a feeling that our privacy was stolen by comporations. I'm so tired of advertisments everywhere. And I'm sad that some ASMR creators have some videos sponsored - I want to relax and suddenly I hear even more advertisments in my earphones (well, I guess everyone need to pay their bills...).
No, "muh evil corporations" is a false answer. Societies are living organisms that humans are fundamentally not in control of. A corporation is a thing, it emerges as a necessary by product of natural selection just as you did. There is no other way it can be.
The cost of the tech impacts people perception of it. What is the ethical cost of a new smartphone? How many underpaid overworked people are part of that chain. How many child miners are in the supply chain. People aren't just forgoing tech because they are scared of beep boop. They are scared of what we as a society have accepted as a requirement to allow these pieces of technology become affordable. I highly recommend Kris De Decker's Low Tech Magazine as an entry into this low tech aesthetic. Great video Alice. keep it up! 😁
the problem with anti-tech is that by eliminating tech from your life, you still will not be free of the issues that made the tech harmful to you in the first place: Capitalism. Tech isnt some phenomena isolated from the real world. It is PART of the real world, and it reflects ideology from the real world, albeit sometimes in very concentrated ways. if cutting out social media helps you, great. But please try not to sensationalize or demonize tech, when tech has a lot of positives to it as it is simply a tool. Tech helps disabled people, and it helps all people connect and share information. Because it is a tool, unfortunately rught now its at the mercy and biases of rich people seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities because thats capitalism. But its way more nuanced than "tech is inherently bad". Its like vegans saying eating meat is inherently bad, when the problem is the capitalist exploitation of animals that is bad. Humans have eaten meat ethically for years before capitalism. This all or nothing thinking does nothing to solve the root problem. And thus, merely becoming a vegan does nothing to help animals because it does not attack the root issue: not the consumption of meat in itself, but demanding that the consumption of meat ( and animal products) be handled with radical dignity and respect for these creatures lives. If you just say"im not gonna eat meat anymore" and clear your consious of it, what does that do for animal liberation as a whole? And so, what does deeming all tech as bad do for liberating anyone from the underlying problems?
I understand being against specific inventions because of their negative impacts, but to be anti-tech is so dumb lol, like literally EVERYTHING human made is technology not just the things that go beep boop
Yeah. The appeal to nature and evolution as some kind of ultimate authority is one of the core tenets of fascism. Evolution is just as arbitrary as invention - we didn't ask to be born human.
It seems that the term "anti-tech" in 2022 is used to represent taking a stance against negative tech, such as genetic engineering, micro plastics, social media, etc. Yes, everything is technology, for example eyeglasses are a form of technology and transhumanism, but we aren't against technology that is helpful to us. Anti-tech mentality rejects the technology that specifically hurts us
@@robogecko4067 Yes, manipulation of genes and cross-species creation of novel organisms is famously uncontroversial 🙄 Let us pay no attention to any relevant ecological or ethical concerns, okay
Technology, in theory, is an absolutely great thing in the sense of the way we progressed as a collective who built upon centuries of scientific breakthroughs. It's when the technology gets too economically driven to the point that it is no longer being used to promote the greater good of the general public, that we start to ask ourselves, "What about us?"
A lot of anti-tech sentiment stems from automation leading to an increase in profit for the bourgeoise and not having the associated decrease amount of work hours for the working class.
I recently deleted many social medias. Mostly because of how much my mental health issues increased because of my life atm. I didn’t realize a decent amount of people were deleting it to. I personally think social media is a great thing but social media addiction is something we need to improve on as teens & a society. I’m not anti media but we should improve what we have otherwise nothing will improve.
westerners call it anti-tech but literally the real anti tech are our grandparents, in my case asian grandparents, lmao they are self sufficient and not glued to social media. funny how this generation finds it aesthetic yet some have capitalized on it with having youtube cottagecore content. countryside life has been doing it ever since.
I love technology, I just hate most of modern technology because of how the companies behind them operate. Social media is making everyone depressed & lonely, it's making us more and more isolated, they're political extremist resonance chambers, phone addictions are ruining the youth's attention span and coping mechanisms, the new generation of parents are using Ipad's to raise kids instead of having to parent them themselves (I'm 20, I wish I didn't get my phone when I was 12, or at least waited with social media until I was 16).. It's scary what we're doing with our tech when almost all long-term evidence suggests only negative outcomes.
Love this video!! I would be really careful though talking about “Western Countries” in broad strokes like you did in this video in regards to covid vaccine distribution. I live in Japan, who was also one of the first countries to receive vaccines from Moderna and Pfeizer, and is also guilty of hoarding thousands upon thousands of vaccines. Placing the sole blame on some western countries neglects the fact that other non-western countries are also guilty of these awful greedy crimes we see in our hypercapitalist world!
So why can't people just like what they like? Isn't it a good thing that some people have become disenchanted with the mindless, technologically-enhanced consumerism of our society and are choosing to no longer engage with it as much? It's suddenly a bad thing that some people are choosing to PRODUCE their own food and clothing instead of solely relying upon the underpaid labor of overseas workers? Isn't it more environmentally-friendly to grow your own damn tomatoes rather than purchase one that has been shipped half-way across the world and has lower nutritional value? Isn't it a good thing that people want to do something that promotes their mental health (i.e. living closer to nature) as opposed to actively destroying it through social media addictions? And why are we acting like these are inherently "Eurocentric" activities when literally every fucking civilization around the world used to live this way up until the last few hundred years? Seriously, there is no lifestyle more universal than an agrarian, "anti-tech" lifestyle. But I suppose it would hurt someone's TH-cam views if more people were to embrace it, so it's better just to shit all over it.
Steady there, buddy. Being closer to nature and closer to your food ARE good things, but don't forget it is VERY difficult to completely cut yourself adrift. Here we are, communicating, of sorts, through the ether in a "magical way" on devices made by......underpaid labor of foreign workers. If you can't laugh at that, you should. I don't sense anyone here "doing a duty" on you or your opinions. Whether we are white or not (you, your Robertson name probably gives you away, Alice, and I) are likely we're all European-derived or influenced, but who cares? A Japanese farmer growing cucumbers outside Kyoto has as much inherent cachet as we do. And if he is a good steward and a good person, I call him brother. Say what you believe and do what makes you feel complete. Let the anger go. And BTW, I have NO social media accounts, but I do like to chat with thoughtful people on line, on interesting sites like this.
I'm interested in the idea that cottagecore was a direct reaction to the pandemic insofar - it was the retreat to a bucolic ideal to deal with the trauma of the event. A lot of books written during and after the two 20th Century world wars see characters reminiscing about the pre-war ideal. This a specific strand in English culture with the myth of 'deep England' and a shire much like the ones the hobbits live in. Thank you.
And also a lot of people rediscovered nature because going for a walk or hike was literally the only leisure activity you were allowed to do outside your house (speaking for myself at least)
June 12 Guardian headline: Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient. Related book recommendation: Bullshit Jobs by the late David Graeber.
When I was a teen Friedrich was my favorite painter, I found his art so melancholic… I loved the crumbling buildings and the little figures against the wide nature
You would really like japanese and Chinese zen art then. Or things closely related. That kind of art tends to focus on putting tiny human figures within a natural landscape. You can probably find modern versions of it as well in case you don't like the linework of the older stuff.
I am currently studying a masters of IT, my girlfriend is a programmer. We have increasingly become anti - tech (especially after we became more involved with programming) and are planning to move to somewhere with more land so I can have a bigger garden. I have a garden already and some days it definitely feels like cottagecore, I find it to be pretty accurate at times - being in my garden with the chickens and ducks is quite blissful and great
This is a very much needed video for me. I’m currently unemployed and looking for a job (but there’s a part of me that wants to be unemployed). Why? The thought of having to work 9-5 and the work culture has made me scared. On top of that, the low wage in my country (Malaysia) is really discouraging. And so, I was enticed with the idea of working from home, making my own bucks. I’m interested in the writing industry. In this process, I would spend a lot of time on the internet, trying to connect with the right person, and it was unbelievably tiring… Just a few moments ago, before starting to watch your video I felt overwhelmed, but now I felt better. This video is somehow cathartic to me. Thanks, Alice.
I think you’d enjoy the book How to Do Nothing. It’s not really self help. It’s more a analysis of the attention economy and taking back ourselves as humans in the earth. It’s critical of leave it all behind comunes.
For me, it's not technology that's the issue, it's the economic system incentivizing it. Automation is good, but if it were done in a democratic "Star Trek" way, where we are motivated to use it to better life for humanity and not for profit. Through automation, giving people more leisurely time so they can spend it traveling, socializing, being creative, or even just sitting around relaxing is not a bad thing. It's when you don't have a economic system that allows people not to work so much cause they have to in order survive. I often feel these absolutist "return to nature" or "return to analog" movements miss the point. We need a new egalitarian economic system and not this post-capitalist techno-feudalism that we have today.
Mary Shelley was the OG Anti-Tech Influencer as a follower of the Victorian Romanticism. She literally wrote ‘Frankenstein’ which was about a person using technology for his own ends and then we know what happens.
To be honest, Frankenstein is more of a reflection on the limits of human nature and what happens when you cross those boundaries, but I wouldn't say it's anti-tech. She was undoubtedly questioning science, as her husband Percy was, but both of them were also fascinated by the experiments of scientists like Galvani, who tried to bring dead frogs back to life with electricity. And she wasn't a follower of the Victorian Romanticism either, she was actually close to the 2nd generation of Romantics and very much an outsider and a pioneer! It's really hard to close her in a strict definition, and I think that this is what makes her a truly relevant figure ❤️
strongly recommend everyone to read David graeber's essay " of flying cars and the declining rate of profit", the problem with technology today is that it is basically control technology oriented towards the needs of infinite growth instead of "poetic technologies" that really improve the state of all humans in the planet
This addressed some things I've been feeling as well, the constant pressure to post everything online and be plugged in. Can you make a video on how capitalism has eroded public spaces/squares?
Miyazaki's movies are influenced by his ecofeminism, it's far more than just "aesthetic". A wanderer above the sea of fog has a paired painting, Woman before the rising sun. The notion of progress is not deconstructed enough. What you don't see is that our economic system is what causes us the pains that we resolve with new tech. That's why indigenous communities can't sustain their way of life. They too suffer zoonotic spill and radiation.
If you dislike the way technology affects your life, simply take a break and restrict its influence for a certain amount of time, if possible. Or delete social media accounts. Lived without Facebook for some time, was the happiest person ever.
Unfortunately there is no anti-tech movement. Like highly developed civilizations of the past, we will also collapse on the complexity of the society we have built. It is the wheel of life.
I'm a humanities student learning to code. I'm also surrounded by people who work in tech. I used to be really turned off by it but now i find it fascinating. I honestly believe that the only reason our generation feels so trapped by it is that we never got a chance to know what our phones/computers actually do and hence we never got any control over them. Technology makes our lives easier but what's behind it is infinitely complex and its really beautiful to write even the most basic program. I honestly encourage young people to learn to code but not bc you need to have a job in tech, but because understanding technology can genuinely bring you more peace.
There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.
What is most powerful is to live consciously no matter where you are, create a lifestyle and a reality for yourself that truly resonates with the being that you are growing into. As ALWAYS following trends is simply unhealthy and unsustainable!
What i find interesting is how anti-positivist people that work in tech from an engineering pov often are. Like surely no one understands technology better than the people that design the stuff...
@@LepiotaI have, he makes a lot of good points, but also several leaps in logic and just out write bad points. He raised some Interesting questions, but I’m still pro-technology
we just want a simple life, the amount of information and choices an average person sees and makes a day is not human. Tech makes us restless. Anti tech will grow. I find most people indorsing tech and not seeing or experiencing negative side effects are boomers. They are not quick with tech and they can easily put their phone away or switch off. They don’t get why you g ppl are fussy about deleting apps etc. But we don’t use tech like boomers, we live it, it uses us, we consume and it consumes us
I’m not a boomer but I’m not anti tech. Social media and tech use to be big part of my life but once I established the relationship that I wanted to have with it, that stopped. Tech is a tool, all things tech are just applications and objects. Younger generations have been thrusted into a world with technology that could be used for almost anything and is also promoted as life changing so it makes sense that it is a big part our lives. It’s easy for boomers to form a laid back relationship with tech but thats not something that younger gens can’t do
Great video, personally I've found a balance in the tech/nature supposed dichotomy in the realm of Solarpunk (kind of a positive futurism, imaginary alternative to cyberpunk). Gives me hope and shows that, if we have the right mindset, our tech and tools can help us to better thrive in the coming end of the Anthropocene.
@@Ana-ty8sl in the bigger picture I also think humanity will eventually sort their shit out, but its sad that so many people and other creatures on the planet have to suffer on the way there
im personally anti-social media because of the racism and other hurtful views that are built into the algorythms and are amplified by the platforms. ive deleted twitter, snapchat, and insta, and stopped usong fb. I am much happier now!
I’m extremely puzzled by your video. Frankly, I can’t explain what point you’re attempting, but you’re doing it in a convincing fashion. Are you saying tech is both bad and good? That progress is relative and not guaranteed, that we can ONLY count on change? That the phrase “Be the best you YOU can be is illusional, because we are all operating machines that are (inexorably) running down? That Bill Gates is hypocritical? (Say it ain’t so!!) And anyway, that sun dress with the spaghetti ties is VERY distracting and is (likely) producing crass animal thoughts in many of your viewers, but perhaps it’s just my low-brow, no-tech mind speaking when it shouldn’t. Perhaps I should tune in again? Is there one (particular) video of yours that will explain what you’re “about”? And I’m curious, is that an English accent built on top of a tiny-house (but lovely) Eastern European floor plan?
12:12 I’m currently at this point right now, activity feels like an obligation that can only be met by a high intensity work out and eating a bit more than normal makes me feel guilty because I’m aware of how many calories and type of calories I’ve eaten. This isn’t healthy, this isn’t natural, this shouldn’t be normal. This video was awesome! Thanks
I really don't like trends, it pushes people to be tribal. whether is be living this cottage core away from technology life or being that NFT guy. Can we see tech as perhaps in old times books might have been seen a utility to help and share ideas, discuss them.
There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.
I am a computer science student. I will likely spend most of my career working on tech. Which i guess at least partly contributes to my skepticism and dislike of it. It's not exactly that I think that technology is bad, just that it keeps getting used for worse and worse means every day. We have had the technology to solve some issues, like our fossil fuel dependency (nuclear and more recently solar & wind) and our car dependency (TRAINS!) for literally decades, yet we just don't do it. Newer better technology will not just magically solve everything. I am also really concerned about the environment and about social issues, and technology seems to constantly get used as a way to dismiss real issues. Climate change? oh it'll just get solved with innovation. You de-growthers are just genocidal (yes they do call de-growth genocidal) Inequality? Oh crypto is 'decentralized', don't worry about inequality man, this is the era of the litte guy! (its not) Racism? There's no racism anymore since people can't see your race behind your avatar (that shit weasel gary vee actually said this) One thing I really enjoy is tech-bros (usually people with a surface level understanding of technology, or social issues, or both) thinking that I'm a luddite. Assures me that I'm on the right path! I don't use social media, and I'm extremely skeptical about the tech bug creeping its way into more and more aspects of society, and due to our neoliberal capitalist base, corrupting more and more aspects of our societal superstructure and making them more and more transactional. (online dating is like shopping for a car on an app, you're picking out a human (who is now already dehumanized) from a catalogue). I also really liked your examples about health (exercise - it should come naturally or you should want to do it because you enjoy it, and food - you should eat healthy food that you like in the amounts you feel are right) - water is also getting gamified - you need your 8 cups, so you need an app to get your 8 cups, oh also, water isn't good enough you need special hydration drinks. The idea that one can just escape from all of these issues by just moving to a small house in the forest or into some other semi-permanent or permanent luxurious retreat is crazy. More alienation and more isolation is not what we need, and it will not help us. We need more community, not less of it. But i absolutely dread being associated with eco-fascists, and want nothing to do with the 'return to tradition', blood and soil, get-a-tradwife-to-cook-barefoot, cottagecore crowd. Disgusting and and idiotic. I feel that I have to take care to make sure that my tech-skepticism stays as far away from this as possible.
as someone who is about to go to college and major in comp sci, do you have any advice on how to not get involved with the hyper capitalistic/innovation-will-solve-everything tech bros? and just advice in general about studying/working in tech? thanks so much, i really enjoyed reading your comment, i think your perspective is very grounded and astute.
Another computer science student here. What concerns me the most isn’t the excesses of Silicon Valley itself as the fact that the left has completely failed to offer a competing vision. The kind of “decentralization” that crypto bros want is of course yet another inventive way for the rich to avoid contributing to society, the goal is to accelerate centralization of power in reality. Ironically, some of the methods proposed by the crypto bros are the closest to what the left needs to be doing to gain a foothold, and dismissing them outright while continuing to promote a primarily social democratic approach to change is myopic, outdated and doomed to failure. The idea of building transnational communities with their own laws, objectives and social programs is the only way to combat the primacy of states and achieve social objectives that corrupt legislatures will never pass. Just instead of creating crypto-libertarian phyles, we need to build communities based on consensus and open exchange. The ideal political organization is one in which each level of governance has only the powers it needs to serve the needs of its members, and only problems that cannot be solved at the level of communities are passed further up the chain. We have to build the infrastructure to replace states now. We should also accelerate the transition to open source as much as possible, emphasizing the role of software as a public good, and create new forms of social media which are aimed not at stealing our data and attention but rather enabling us to work together to build new systems regardless of our locations, creating new systems of education and working towards new systems of governance as outlined above.
@@leilaschrof529 Sadly I think most of us will have to work on alternative solutions in our free time while maintaining an income from more conventional tech jobs. But the more of us there are, the better chance we have to build a movement and work together on more ethical projects.
By the way, you guys should check out “Abolish Silicon Valley” by Wendy Liu. Her critique is quite interesting, the only weak part to me is that I feel she underestimates the problematic nature of centralization, like most on the left.
Its simple. Use tech to your advantage. If you use tech passively, tech will use you to its advantage. Like a peasant to the tech lords. If your aware its a choice, and you cannot be considered a victim.
Couldn't it be said that van-life or tiny-house, etc. etc., are a form of the great refusal ala Marcuse? Sometimes detaching yourself from the political system is the most political thing you can do. While, obviously, there are some very clear limitations to this, and it is typically white people that have very little to lose by resigning from "civilization"-in a time where everything is political, being apolitical is a political decision. Also, the idea of a "pipeline" when speaking about cottage core seems reminiscent of the slippery slope argument (fallacy). I.E. marijuana is a pipeline to harder drugs or socialism as a pipeline to a totalitarian, repressive form of communism. Since technology is almost only being developed under the guidance of capitalist values, it seems impossible to disconnect technological advancements to the status quo. Idk.
If you're ready to go full hardcore on anti-tech, then read Theodore Kaczynski's two books, Technological Slavery and Anti-Tech Revolution. But warning: once you go full hardcore red-pill on tech, there's no going back.
I work with computers and cell phones daily, but with the development of AI I'm quite scared. I'm scared of people eventually running out of employment possibilities because everything can be done by a robot, or making robots more like humans and humans more like robots (like the ideas some people have of merging humans with robots).
I'll have to watch your tiny house video too in order to gain context and see if your stance really is the false binary that I'm currently perceiving ... but in my experience, the tiny house movement has a lot of political activism entrenched into it, at least in my region (and I imagine this does vary regionally, now that I think about it more). Here in Colorado and in much of the USA, the tiny house community is inextricable from activism about updating building codes themselves to even allow real tiny homes (they're illegal in many if not most places in the USA), along with activism about our homelessness crisis, and activism about sustainable living. So yeah, again, I'm sure this varies regionally, but figured I should toss this info out there 🤷♂️ Most things aren't really very monolithic. I do totally agree though with the criticism of tiny house/vanlifer communities being very privileged, at least for the most part. I've been unhoused pretty consistently for about a decade now myself and thus vehicle life very much originally chose me, so it's been very strange seeing people recently popularizing vanlife and spending tens of thousands of dollars for a glamorous version of the lifestyle I get harassed and honked at for on a regular basis just because I can't afford to do it aesthetically lol. There are definitely lots of weird sick ironies to that whole phenomenon and it's good to see it being criticized.
I am an Absolute fan of constant progress however i very much dislike the brutalist approach to it. I dont need to live in a glass cube, i can just place a WiFi-Router in my 1700 Half-Timbered-House.
Add "value" to a community. What even does mean? Not terrifying but that is like a marketing gimmick. Now all jargon about technology is about profit, money, money, money, no wonder a few people had enough of it and become anti-tech.
I don't really consider myself anti-tech (though I don't own a dryer because they are NOISY, I tolerate my washer because it is small and I don't have enough spoons to wash all our clothes and linens by hand), but I do consider myself pretty anti-capitalism. Which, ultimately feeds into the reason the Luddites came to be. If automation had made factory work safer and faster, so workers could spend less of their days working in a safer environment without losing wages, I think they would have been happy with that arrangement. But profit over people lead to demonization of the machine and not the factory owners.
I saw how they extract the minerals that make the batteries for this stuff, and I have to say, taken all together, this technology is a curse. Suddenly we "need" it, though. Thank god it's fragile. In a hundred years, when they're cooking rats over a camp fire they'll have no idea what all this garbage is.
They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.
@@andriy2349 They have greatly increased everyone's life expectancy, not just in advanced countries. That's kind of the problem in countries like Chad that you have huge old birth rates, but European technology permits them to survive. Then this populations moves to advanced countries due to permissive immigration, ruining the effect of low birth rates.
Just a small detail, at 1:03 you show a medium article named "Were more troops sent to quash the Luddites than to fight Napoleon?" while saying "Legal and military force was used against the protestors", that was done in bad faith, because the implication you make in the video is that they were, but if you look up the article, they clarify: "not even close" as the total number deployed to against the Luddites was tens of thousands units less than troops to fight Napoleon.
I wouldn't consider myself a luddite, but im honestly just tired of it all and how desensitized ppl are to recording everything and everyone no privacy ever whether you fall in public or in your house being intimate with a partner anything and everything keeps getting recorded with or without consent, nobody even talks to one abother anymore because they're too into their phones. Plus i hate how much ppl post their kids online when they know there are so many predators online. I dont want to completely cut technology probably just social media ive honestly been considering buying a flip phone and only using that.😭😭 ive already deleted tiktok, and snapchat i want to delete instagram and youtube nect but my husband wants me to keep instagram so he can show me videos of cats, but i dont understand how social media has bevome so intertwinded in todays world and i just wish it eould end i long for the days when i could be a kid in peace without someone shoving a phone in my face.
Cottage core being a form of n-zi propaganda is a bizarre connection. I just thought it was another type of escapism to avoid the stress of modern life and city living. An excuse to lay in a bed of flowers under the sun in flouncy skirts and pastels.
haven’t watched it yet but i recently deleted all social media (except yt obviously and reddit) and i’ll tell you it’s 1000x better. next is to get rid of reddit lol
my smartphone broke like a few weeks ago. but now i only have one laptop. and to be honest i don't think i will get a smart phone again. i love technology, but i think i don't need a smartphone. and also i hate these extremist ideas like either no tech or everything tech. i think the truth here is in the middle. i think some tech is stupid and i am against them like tik tok and smart phones, but electric motor and even crypto i think these tech actually make your life better.
@@joandarc441 cryptocurrency is a technology. Well more specifically the block chain is a technology that is useful. Not just in cryptocurrencies. Think of things like scientific data, people can't just create data out of thin air. Basically if you understand the block chain you will see a lot of potential. Also about crypto. US dollar is as scam as crypto but we believe in it. Imagine if we believed in crypto you wouldn't say it is a scam. And internet is another tool that people use in a wrong way. If you go back to the beginning it was used for scientist. I believe internet is ultimately only useful for sharing thoughts and science. Like what we are doing rn.
The anti-tech sentiments are largely reactions of confusion or frustration. The constant implementation and optimization of technology means an increasing complexity. When people become aware that the technology that USED to be used to make our lives simpler are now instead CREATING angles to complicate our lives the virtue of technology is lost. An example: Sure my iPhone 13 is a marvel of modern technology but now I’m complicating my life with payments, accounts, passwords, charging cycles, and an endless invasive connection to the internet. Technology, rather than being a deflationary effect on the necessity of our lives has now created and enabled such a thorough degree of commoditization that the deflationary effect is being reversed by the selfish feedback loops of liberalism.
I think the ideology that glorifies progress, while ignoring that this progress is a passtime for wealthy people, while millions and billions of people aren't even having access to the basics is so important, it should be the title of the video and spread around more! That point is so important.
hi Alice! I don't know if you will see this, but I was wondering if you would consider doing a video jumping off of this "anti-tech" movement and diving into the world of "trad LARPing" that's an extension of this and running rampant in its delusions (an example that comes to mind would be yt creator isabel paige + basically any cottagecore shit) ~ I've just been thinking about this issue a lot lately and it's very interwoven with what you are discussing here and so I think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts and see where exploring this topic might take you. anyways, just a thought! had to launch it ~ bisous, b
The idea of counting callories, your sleep, your nutrients to become the most fullest person you can be is very masculine. Like training super soldiers. It speaks to me because i think very masculine. Thats who i am. I do agree on your point about beeng more intiutive, and thats what i want to work on to. Integrating some feminine traits as a male can enrich myself and others. Its a balancing act, different for each person.
The whole cottagecore aesthetic makes me laugh because their idea of nature is no more natural than a McDonald's cheeseburger. Farmland is equally manmade as a city block is. Internet Shaquille made a short called "The Masculine Urge to Live In the Woods" where he basically says that all these "return to tradition" folks have no idea how difficult farming actually is.
at the end of the day for me it isn't much about anti-tech... it's more about anti-profit-centered tech... (mainly social networks and how most of AI and algorithms are set to work)
beautiful way to put it
It has to be about the profit, otherwise there is no incentive to invest millions of your own money to get out new products. The profit incentive is not the problem, the real problem is that it's disruptive for user's psychology and spreads misinformation. So they should focus on pushing out actual useful products and they can still get their money for doing so.
@@Leonhart_93 that’s what used to happen before the advent of social media, big tech figured out that selling actual tools that benefit your average human is far less profitable than tapping into our inherent desire to feel engaged, amused, etcetera. The problem is the profit incentive. We wouldn’t have platforms with exploitative algorithms otherwise. We are the commodity, the product, because big tech makes money by using their algorithms to keep us engaged and selling our data to the highest bidder(for advertising purposes). The process is so entrenched in the industry that the general public may never escape its effects.
@@puppetman1086 That's how it is for now, since most haven't figured out the honey trap they are in. But I am sure there will be big anti social media and anti zombification movements in the future. They could capitalize on that and make profit by offering us products that would help with the addiction.
Tech has always been about profit, if technology wasn’t profitable it wouldn’t be used and further developed.
I was a teenager in 2003-2008 and it was perfect, right in the middle. Social media addiction is no joke and people building a fake persona on social media and finding real life boring is very concerning.
Real life is interesting to me. It's just very hard for me to interact with people, due to my condition. But I'd like to keep trying, anyway.
I was a teenager in 1856 and let me tell you there then the balance was optimal.
I was a teenager in 2019 and let me tell you then everything was great even though this is just a faulty memory and not reflective of the actual experiences that were happening
I was a teenager in 2135 and my IQ is 70 and that was the best time to be alive.
Then read Ted's books
@@Lepiota or read not how to get pregnant at a young age.
@@joandarc441 qu'est ce que tu me racontes toi 👁👁
i realized my mental health episodes were severely impacted by certain types of tech, and also i can observe my use of certain technologies as a way to understand if my mental health is moving in a negative direction. nuance in everything. there's a useful organization in the US called ATTRA or appropriate technology transfer to rural areas... what's interesting is that in rural US we are still using dial up internet!
Being a software engineer, I'm not against tech, I'm against how it has been commoditized while posing as "disruptive" and "progressive"
I agree. I've worked in Tech 25 years. When I started in the industry the commoditization of everything hadn't started. I find the weaponisation against us through the use of psychology the worst part of how things have progressed. Instead of it being used for the good of humanity it supports the wealth accumulation for a few.
@@rachelbrian8602 psychology is a speudo-science based on observing patterns in culturalised individuals. get out of your mind and you can't be controlled. as long as fear guides your life, you're owned.
Agreed.
This is a great point! I used to work for a home health care company that marketed itself based on the fact that both caregivers and clients/clients’ families had designated apps. The app was helpful for caregivers to share charting notes with each other and clients, but it was terrible at assigning caregivers. If they had only used the app for things like charting and done the caregiver matching manually it would have been much better.
When you have an honest love for technology, you dont love the technology itself, but the benefits it creates.
Even though Social media, hype corps like Tesla, smart everything, commercial space flight and 1000 ways to track your fitness are all technologies, I dont love them but despise them.
They are not designed to improve lifes. Their sole purpose is the financial gain of the inventor and manipulation of the user.
As a child who was often in the care of her grandparents at the village, I would say that cottagecore seems to be purely for aesthetic points. I would like to see them roll in mud, work in the garden, tan from exhausting work under the sun, cook with homegrown food only.
Their is a true beauty in the life they’re trying to aesthetically portray, but it’s in the sheer hard work people have to put up with, the plants they grow, real life connections they make etc. And I’m not sure they realise it. But maybe that’s just the way I see it.
I have to agree with you, I’ve being working on a market garden for the last 6 months and it’s really hard physical work but having a sense of really tight knit community and being satisfied with what you have done after the day is over and being able to really see what you have produced. I think that the reach for the aesthetic is trying to reclaim that sense of community and lack of alienation of work which unfortunately a lot of people have lost in their lives.
they just want a nice background for pictures
As a South American ~country girl~ it's so funny seeing people on the cottagecore community that never spent a day working in a farm and portray it like it's stardew valley or something
Maybe they just want to portray it in a nice way. I have a garden, which at some points provides my family most of the fruits and a good portion of vegetables. I've had so much fruit that I had to freeze it. Currently trying to eat or use all of our mandarins.
I don't have enough space to grow more yet, but we have chickens, ducks and quails too. I plan on moving somewhere with more space so I can grow more - I don't feel anywhere near challenged enough yet, most days I wish I had more jobs to do in the garden. Most days all I do is water my seedlings or harvest.
A lot of days it does feel blissful and peaceful like they portray in the aesthetic. Sometimes it's the only thing keeping me relaxed and happy when I have a lot of study to do for uni. From my experience the cottagecore aesthetic is pretty accurate. I don't think it has to portray all the frustrations that come with it (like the chickens escaping and eating all your seedlings), some things can just be nice.
I think that is the whole point. Because it's an " aesthetic" not a lifestyle for them. Something pretty to the eye and just that.
I'm really digging the work of The Centre for Humane Technology (and their podcast Your Undivided Attention). Essentially they are saying that tech is being programmed to exploit limbic system and hold our attention. Every app is designed to get us to use it more, where apps could be designed to enhance other aspects of our life and not maximize our screen time. So long as all the big players are driven by profits, it's going to be an uphill battle with tech.
that's a fantastic perspective on our current relationship with technology, it's so frustrating on how much tech could TRULY help us but instead suck away so much of our happiness by getting us hooked on short term dopamine fixes and the constant bombardment of tragedy in our world. i feel like if our society wasn't so hyper capitalistic and profit focused, tech wouldn't consume our lives as it does now and it would enhance our lives instead of being our lives.
This is why i deleted the TH-cam app on my phone and now use my mobile browser instead, i spend a lot less time bored on TH-cam now
It always comes back to capitalism
good point to bring up in this dialogue
@@leilaschrof529 I mostly use TH-cam for people playing different fighting games/Horror stories or how to you know how to download pirated movies/music/ and games 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’m not anti-tech, I’m anti-social media and unnecessary technology. It’s hard to look at social media, and at the people I love who use it and see them suffering because of it and not want it to end. How disconnected everyone has become, the way it’s made us view each other and the world around us is incredibly unhealthy. I don’t care if someone’s life is genuinely made better by technology, personally mine never fails to be worse with it so I choose to use it as little as possible. In fact TH-cam is a form of mental self harm for me so I shouldn’t even be here right now.
If you are still on youtube and receive a notification for my comment, there is actually a way to turn off comment notifications! That helped me a lot. I try my best to stay off social media as much as I can but it is hard. I think tbh it plays a role in causing depression and makes people angry and bitter.
just don't bother political channels in TH-cam you will be fine
@@ahuman5772 "technology bad cause people are mean :("
@@joandarc441- Channels discussing social issues are far worse.
I know it's said a lot how tiny younger people's attention span is, but I really can't stress enough how much I hate the lack of attention span I really have thanks to tech, specifically social media. If I ever want to sit down and enjoy something simple without too much stimulation, it gets extremely boring and unbearable, and then I go right back to scrolling aimlessly through reddit.
Anyway, I watched this video yesterday and today I decided to go to the side of a highway (there's a neglected bike trail there and there's no good public park close by) and just watch the cars go by while listening to a local baseball game on a transistor radio. That was it. Some of the things that I find hard to do thanks to my terrible attention span are reading, watching tv shows, playing single-player video games, or watching a baseball game without going on my phone. I want to enjoy these things more, and I think all of that would make my life more interesting than whatever I've got going on now.
I wanted to be outside for the whole game, but unfortunately due to circumstances I could only be out for just under an hour. It was a pleasant experience though, one I'll try to do more this summer now that the weather is nice. This night though I ended up, well, spending most of my time scrolling through reddit.
Behold the modern human. Be scared and deeply ashamed.
I guess I am anti-tech the way some people are flexitarians haha. More seriously, my tendency to have some "drastic" and active anti-tech behaviours is based on necessity (No screens at least one evening/week, no scrolling before bed, no podcast or listening to music when in a quiet outdoor place). I am neurodivergent and I've noticed the constant stimulation one gets from social media and various apps greatly contributes to my brain's restlessness. I grab my phone and it's like I'm on train tracks: facebook stop, emails, then instagram and lastly, the blackhole that tiktok is. I didn't get any social media before 18, I used to read a ton and go to bed early. Now I get ear worms from tiktok sounds and instead on hyperfixations on a book character and reading said book several times I will go through 3 months of my youtube history to look for a comment in a video. In a way, I feel like longing and romanticizing a "tech-less" time is a way to reconnect with our tech-less selves, usually our childhood. Except we don't know how to do anymore. Because even when it's harmful, even when it creates or nurtures unhealthy behaviours the way we now live have us constantly stimulated. So we need some sort of tutorial, something that makes the silence, the simplicity, the "loneliness" extra appealing after years of demonizing. That's where the flowery linen clothes and picnic baskets come into play. The only representation we tend to have of solitude and just taking time to think, look, enjoy your own company is usually stained with negativity. It comes across as boredom, loneliness and the mental image you get of it is just ...a blank. So joining a movement as the anti-tech movement, or embracing an aesthetic gives the person means of representation, conceptualisation, of painting a positive and collective picture of what is often seen as time to be filled instead of experienced.
Thank you for sharing this. Well written, and illuminating. I personally feel that solitude is bliss, but I very much appreciate your perspective here, and the described connection of the cottagecore/ anti-tech movement. It makes sense. I still love letters and landlines, myself. 😊 I am curious-- have you gone back to being a bookworm, or do you have any desire to do so?
A natural urge to socialize would come back too when disengaged with those superficial forms of communication
But, do not be fast to discard the important ethic of leaving the cities, they are death upon earth. Do give a closer look to Max Neef's human scaled development and Calhoun's lost papers. Maybe even the Agnotological powers that keep us so overcrowded and now want to give rise to ecofascism.
@@tabularasa Yes! I did a pause in my main studies last year (midwifery) which demanded a lot of academic reading and kind of had me sick of reading at the end of the day and revenge procrastinating with social media. So I did 1 year of english studies which was also filled with academic reading as you can imagine but at least there was fiction and a rich imaginary world that triggered a need for more. I now found a good balance I think, I go through phases. But I also joined a book club and participate to literary discussions at my local independent bookstore which keeps me on track! I'm also never got rid of my book shopping addiction which is now a library borrowing addiction and returning a book without having read it never feels great so I just read a lot more now :)
Great comment, thank you for this perspective
I'm so glad to have watched this video because you could put into words a feeling that I've been having: the right to intimacy. I keep asking myself: why do we need to share everything online? Don't we have the right to have our own thoughts and just BE with them? Another tech item that's gotten my attention is also the smartwatch. I always have the feeling that if I buy one my body will become a factory where everything can be assessed, and improved, and most of the time we just need to... LIVE! The idea of being invaded describes entirely my feeling towards this. Right now, I'm only using watches for their original purpose: to check the time!
As always, another great video, thanks Alice!
A smart watch would be overkill for me. I just now upgraded from my S9 phone to the S22 Ultra because I happened to catch a trade in deal before it ended, and this things does more than enough for what I do across most personal devices. Makes editing my photography on the go much less of a hassle.
My watch is straight up analog and I love it.
Social media is something I could do mostly without though.
I completely agree! This idea of quantifying myself for companies is really scary! I love having a phone I can leave in another room for hours but smart watches give me anxiety!
people who use smartwatches can be easily convinced that they need to buy literally anything imo
It's interesting to look into this quantified self that Amanda mentioned. It goes hand in hand with the "tools" created. You've touched upon it with your comment "the intuitive self". Intuition cannot be measured but the tools are all about quantifying. So inorder to capture this 'vagueness', the technologies will become more invasive to have a grasp at this "intuition". From smart watches with sensors tracking pulses, temperature and movement to the eye tracking that will accompany the virtual metaverse, these will be the new tools for data harvesting. The only thing about this data is that its nature needs to be 'measured' or quantified.
@@nataliekazful great point!!!
The Luddites weren't *really* anti tech per sé... Rather they were opposed to the ways that factory owners used technological advancements at the expense the livelihoods of workers, and wanted the benefits of automation to be more equitably shared to improve the living and working conditions of ordinary people. There were some factory owners who offered benefits such as education, retraining, or better hours to their employees, and their machinery went untouched.
They were really an early "progressive industrial" movement in many ways. The view of them as regressive anti-technology reactionaries was really nothing more than propaganda put out by business and the government of the day to dismiss their concerns and justify cracking down on them. Propaganda so effective that we still today use the term "Luddite" to describe someone who is anti tech.
It’s interesting how their motives have been twisted to be aligned with people like the unibomber, who was unanimously anti-tech conceptually. The Luddites actually seemed to have quite reasonable concerns and demands, based on concrete conditions of their life and the future, as opposed to an innate hate of what is new, different, or “unnatural”
Great explanation. In this sense it wouldn't hurt for all of us to be demand we partake in the benefits of technological advancements, if people are living worse and unhappier then that isn't progress.
So what's the point of life then? If we were to have a progressive tax code to fund more programs so people will not despise the system we currently live in...that seems like social democracy. It seems like you're saying, "We criticize certain aspects of the system, but we're not cringe regressive reactionaries." You have to grapple with the Unabomber's manifesto. Violence aside, what is actually wrong with his predictions? He was influenced by Jacques Ellul, who was an anarchist. Capitalism, statist repression, and environmental degradation are linked together.
We also can't deny that social media definitely had impact on our social skills, it individualised and atomised our generation more.
I completely agree, and I also think it kind of contributed to us having trouble to deal with the complexity and contradiction that's inherently human. I'm a Brazilian and right now the collectiveness is so sensitive that there isn't any espace to embrace differences and contradiction. Right now it's a gigantic battle of us x them.
@@alicelond yes yes yes (sim? portuguesa aqui rs). I've grown up mostly online and I've seen how people are continually mocked and "cancelled" for the smallest things (not talking about actual harassment here, just differing opinions or ways of life). Like people just don't know how to deal with conflict. Everyone has a scorched earth approach these days - maybe it's the last resort, when the powers that be have refused to listen to people's legitimate concerns for decades, all because they'd rather be put to sleep by the sweet lullaby of more profit.
I had to figure it out on my own because the education I got was "if you're one of the good ones, you don't need to worry". But there is no "good ones" - just different sides fighting for moral superiority. I promise there really isn't, even if you're a self-sacrificing priest, even if your core ideas are all about love and peace and housing for all. You are still fighting, you are still on one side, and of course you're going to get defensive about it. Interpersonal and political conflict requires a tact and patience that we simply forego nowadays, because it's more profitable to "dunk" your opponent, or cancel them, or use identity politics to pull the rug from under their feet. It makes you more popular and richer, therefore closer to victory.
Even at an interpersonal level, I always think an argument is the end of a relationship instead of something that's natural. I feel like raising my voice is inherently abusive and "narcissistic" because of all the shit people talk about online. Yes, we need to defend victims, yes, we need to raise awareness, but awareness should not be paranoia. I'm paranoid every time I disagree with someone because what if that's the final straw for them? Just some more paranoid rambling here, ofc. There are people who are not like this and I've found them and need to stick to them, because the other option is to simply annihilate myself out of existence.
@@kawaiixtc I felt the same things you've just described with Twitter! Every time I read something, I'd feel as if every complaint or wrong-doing was mine, and this lead me to great levels of anxiety. It's funny to realize how we're not simply machines who can separate different instances of our lives (this reminded me of the show Severance, btw), and the stimulus we receive online affect directly the way we interact with each other. It gives me a certain comfort to read your comment and to know that someone with a totally different background has the same feelings towards this. My personal solution nowadays involves a very difficult effort to embrace the complexity and that every single one of us WILL make mistakes, but this doesn't mean we're not worthy.
@@kawaiixtc You are one smart person in this world. I feel that a lot of people simply do not respect others´opinion. There is a lack of empathy from everyone nowadays and they want to make everything political. I literally stopped hanging out with a friends in fears that she would get me cancelled because I do not share the same point of view as hers. I do understand hers but she will never understand mine and I dont think its fair plus I even try to not talk about these topics but shes constantly bringing them up:(
@@kawaiixtc very well said. You put my thoughts perfectly into words
All of the crypto-libertarian nonsense is indeed bad, but there is a significant lack of discussion and debate on the left regarding what we want our relationship with technology to look like going forward. There are beginnings of a “slow tech” movement, and the open source software movement is indeed essential for the future of our digital communities, but only a small number of people are really promoting these ideas and framing their importance in a way that nontechnical people can easily understand and put into practice.
As much as I love the kind of commentary that Alice and others offer on these issues, I can’t help but feel that there’s too much discussion on the left and too little action. We’re so focused on critique but spend much less time contemplating the truly essential questions of how to translate ideas into action.
Thank God. The faster the left dies the better tbh, the fundamental basis with which they see the world is literal poison.
As a person in tech, a lot of us are still very skeptical about Web3. The most vocal people about Web3 are usually marketers and financiers.
I'm speaking almost ludicrously broadly here, but it seems to me that tech-centered people tend to be stronger at adapting to things already happening as a result of decisive objective facts than they are at predicting future patterns involving nuances of human behavior, whereas marketers and financial sector people tend towards the inverse. I'm all for skepticism, of course, and I'm not taking a position on how Web3 will play out, but I lean towards assuming a little credibility on principle of whatever's said by the people whose careers depend more on guessing what humans will want than on building things humans need. Not that you implied any extreme positions with your comment or anything, just sharing what I think.
I very much think simplifying my life after the pandemic hit was a nudge in the right direction, and I think cutting extremely back on social media was one of the healthiest things I’ve ever done in my life. But I still enjoy many many aspects of not only tech, but social media itself. Especially as someone queer living in rural areas. So it’s just a constant struggle to find the perfect balance. I’m definitely not anti tech, but it’s become really important to me personally to cut back and focus on being more present in my own life
I completely relate and appreciate your putting this experience into words
The quote of the end of the video really struck me. I’m a high school teacher and the “requirement to speak” is so forceful all day for my students. If you’re not careful, students feel pressured to speak even when they have nothing to say. I try hard to give students time to think and slow down discussion. I notice more thoughtful comments, from a broader range of people, and it definitely has a significant impact on their mental state.
Good work there👏
I don't know if I am anti technology, but i am definitely anti the way I can't seem to concentrate on anything if I have my social media accounts activated... Or how I need my computer more than I need water for my job, or how I'm lost without my phone... I also hate the fact that whenever my depression starts acting up, it's when I use technology the most to get a little bit of something in my life.
I often find myself wishing I had lived these years i am currently living in an earlier period of time, early enough to not have computers and mobile phones and social media, but not so early that color tv isn't a thing. Kind of like the 80s and 90s.
i think the reason some people like the 80s/90s so much is that tech really enhanced our lives instead of BEING our lives
I think that 2013s were great. We had computers, and smartphones. I'd stay in that era technologically. Nowadays it's just too much.
@@leilaschrof529 Depends what country tho in the 80s or 90s especially for third world countries or having a Dictator not all countries are having fun.
being addicted to technology is ruining my life haha help
My opinion on tech is that we should ALWAYS have a back up plan. We do not know the future and it is important not to put all our eggs in the same basket
Any plan is necessarily technology
wtf does that even mean
@@venusianblivet9518it is fairly obvious that by “technology” it is meant the technological system
Author of the video: “White people can easily detach from what is happening in the world”
Me as a Ukrainian, who is living for the last 100+ days in a state of war: OK 👌🏻
It’s still a mostly accurate assessment of white westerners though, especially bougie ones. Ukraine is in the eastern euro/Eurasian sphere.
What I find interesting is that smartwatches, a technology that I agree is frivolous or even harmful for most non-disabled people, is life changing for many people like me. My watch can detect if I fall and call an ambulance and monitors my heart rate, helping me track how well my medications are working. Unfortunately tech companies can make much more money by getting people to use them to obsessively check the text messages than they can from improving the lives of people like me.
I wouldn’t say that tech is frivolous for non-disabled people, everyone has different needs and there’s a lot of use regularly abled people can get out of technology like smart watches too. The problem is that we are being taught to base our purchases around how popular or cool the tech is rather than if it suits our needs. So many people just aren’t thinking for themselves about HOW they want to use their tech, they just assume that they will get good use out of it because everyone else seems to like theirs. Technology is all just tools, we should be basing the tech we own around our individual lives and needs; instead it seems to be the other way around these days, where we let the companies dictate what tech we should buy and we tailor ourselves to make it work for us as best we can. Luckily now people are starting to wake up more and more to overconsumption in general, and also to the manipulation and mind games big tech is using against us to make more money.
@@clared5812 Thank you for making a great point about how these kinds of features can help non-disabled people too.
What ways do you think it could be harmful?
@@clared5812 I would argue that the benefits of a smartwatch often out way the negatives for many non-disabled people. Most people have their phone on them and many find the watch distracting and a waste of time and attention for its limited benefits 🤷🏻♀️
@@avacx smartwatches and similar ways to monitor one's body can lead to eating disorders. They can increase stress instead of relieving it. I'm way happier now that I've deleted the Samsung Health app from my phone. It was after a post by a local association for ED's made me think about health monitoring and how it can reduce our quality of life. For sure, that doesn't happen to everyone, and like was said in the original comment, these devices can help people who have disabilities and chronic illness.
I'm not anti-tech, especially in the regressive backwards-looking sense, and I at the same time have some deep reservations about the promise of tech driven by venture capital and maximizing profit. At the very least, it seems to me that too much of tech is developed (basically) unmittigatedly in the name of profit and as a consequence is doing its best work for investors and executives.
In the worst-case, not getting a more intentional, regulated grip on technology pushes humanity into greater and greater destabilization, and best-case, it robs us of the real benefit and better world that it would otherwise bring. Three cheers for a future of improvements to properly regulate technology and get greater public ownership over its development and benefits.
Edit: Side note: On the subject of over-stimulation, I've gotten to the point where owning a CRT tv and playing retro games in the evening on a warm, low-nit screen that is not connected to the internet feels like a form of unplugging. Take that for what it is, just a strange self-observation, lol.
With problem with tech is largely the same problem as viewers and producers of left-wing above essays: a lack of guiding, encompassing metrics tracking objective improvements to the human condition. With the differentiating factor being: big tech has that lack by design, whereas the above is by incompetence. The first builds solutions for the wrong metrics, whereas the second carpet-bombs the air with qualitative statements and "solutions" serving no metric.
@@themore-you-know The TH-cam comment section isn't where we always put our most rigorous and complete thoughts forward, it's a largely reactive social conversation. Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left, that's a big reason why the left gets called elitist all the time. The ongoing gun safety/violence conversation is a recent, concrete example of the left looking at injury/deaths per capita from gun violence and comparing the United States to other countries or even comparing how certain states have trended before/after enacting certain restrictions. The left (as well as independents and some on the right in this case) has then offered a variety of substantive legal solutions based on what the information suggests is most effective way to reduce premature death due to guns.
Also, people aren’t neatly categorized as “the left” or “the right” and it’s a messy, reductive way to term a critique that is focused on rigor and objectivity. Not to be too hostile to your comment, quality data and metrics are something we should value and it’s intuitive to think that if people more genuinely root their thinking in them, we’d be coming to more constructive solutions.
@@brady9592, if "Metrics and data are heavily favored by the left", then LGBTQ and Feminism wouldn't be running the show. There are no metrics justifying having them as anything close to priorities.
And environmentalism would be handled through engineering and far reaching policies, not feelings-first approaches.
NOTE: I have a degree in a field of environmental sciences, and I am disgusted by how we inefficiently and with how little urgency we approach the end-all-be-all priority.
I would have partially agreed with your statement, had you made it decades ago.
@@themore-you-know I agree with your disgust at how inefficiently we approach environmental issues, we differ on our analysis of the drivers and it’s not something we’re likely to bridge between us. At the very least, I hope you’re able to find an avenue to help bring about the environmental policies we so heavily lack, I’ve been working to do the same.
@@brady9592, What are the avenues you've been working on?
I first got into the idea of removing modern technology from my life because I'm a bit of an 80s recreationalist. I'm only 20 years old but at the moment I'm working on transitioning to an 80s-style wardrobe and decorating my room to match. I enjoy the idea of having nothing more than a VCR, cassette tapes, vinyls and maybe a computer for emails. Planning on getting a dumb phone for phone calls only. If people really want to get in touch they'll text me or email. I don't care so much about nature, but I do care about having a free mind. I enjoy books, drawing, music, singing, dancing, and other stuff that really doesn't require modern tech. These are my hobbies, they're not necessarily done for an audience. I like the idea of choosing when people can see me. I dislike the idea of having my health stats, interests, and consumer habits being tracked every moment of every day. That information can easily be exploited, despite the "disclaimers" and "t's & c's" that people do or do not read. I also now only deal in cash, where possible - I've had too much security and glitching issues for me to enjoy online banking anymore. Once I've gathered all my favourite cassettes and purchased a walkman, I won't have any need for Spotify. Once I have a VCR and a compatible TV, I can get rid of Disney+ and Netflix and just watch tapes instead. And having access to less media will make me less likely to binge-watch shows and movies, and will encourage me to slow down as rewatching the same stuff constantly will soon get boring. Instead I'll be more likely to choose my non-tech hobbies.
Let's at the very least keep tech as an accessory, not a necessity, to life.
That sounds like a shallow infatuation with an aesthetic as opposed to any actual intelligent understanding of the self or the world.
Just saw this comment. I'd love to hear where you're at now with your 80s journey and going back to simpler tech
Thank you. Finally I don't feel alone with a feeling that our privacy was stolen by comporations. I'm so tired of advertisments everywhere. And I'm sad that some ASMR creators have some videos sponsored - I want to relax and suddenly I hear even more advertisments in my earphones (well, I guess everyone need to pay their bills...).
No, "muh evil corporations" is a false answer. Societies are living organisms that humans are fundamentally not in control of. A corporation is a thing, it emerges as a necessary by product of natural selection just as you did. There is no other way it can be.
The cost of the tech impacts people perception of it. What is the ethical cost of a new smartphone? How many underpaid overworked people are part of that chain. How many child miners are in the supply chain. People aren't just forgoing tech because they are scared of beep boop. They are scared of what we as a society have accepted as a requirement to allow these pieces of technology become affordable. I highly recommend Kris De Decker's Low Tech Magazine as an entry into this low tech aesthetic. Great video Alice. keep it up! 😁
the problem with anti-tech is that by eliminating tech from your life, you still will not be free of the issues that made the tech harmful to you in the first place: Capitalism.
Tech isnt some phenomena isolated from the real world. It is PART of the real world, and it reflects ideology from the real world, albeit sometimes in very concentrated ways.
if cutting out social media helps you, great. But please try not to sensationalize or demonize tech, when tech has a lot of positives to it as it is simply a tool. Tech helps disabled people, and it helps all people connect and share information.
Because it is a tool, unfortunately rught now its at the mercy and biases of rich people seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities because thats capitalism.
But its way more nuanced than "tech is inherently bad".
Its like vegans saying eating meat is inherently bad, when the problem is the capitalist exploitation of animals that is bad. Humans have eaten meat ethically for years before capitalism. This all or nothing thinking does nothing to solve the root problem. And thus, merely becoming a vegan does nothing to help animals because it does not attack the root issue: not the consumption of meat in itself, but demanding that the consumption of meat ( and animal products) be handled with radical dignity and respect for these creatures lives. If you just say"im not gonna eat meat anymore" and clear your consious of it, what does that do for animal liberation as a whole? And so, what does deeming all tech as bad do for liberating anyone from the underlying problems?
I understand being against specific inventions because of their negative impacts, but to be anti-tech is so dumb lol, like literally EVERYTHING human made is technology not just the things that go beep boop
Yeah. The appeal to nature and evolution as some kind of ultimate authority is one of the core tenets of fascism. Evolution is just as arbitrary as invention - we didn't ask to be born human.
Being anti-tech is just like the movie -Idiocrasy😂😂😂
It seems that the term "anti-tech" in 2022 is used to represent taking a stance against negative tech, such as genetic engineering, micro plastics, social media, etc. Yes, everything is technology, for example eyeglasses are a form of technology and transhumanism, but we aren't against technology that is helpful to us. Anti-tech mentality rejects the technology that specifically hurts us
@@tabularasa genetic engineering isn’t bad
@@robogecko4067 Yes, manipulation of genes and cross-species creation of novel organisms is famously uncontroversial 🙄 Let us pay no attention to any relevant ecological or ethical concerns, okay
Technology, in theory, is an absolutely great thing in the sense of the way we progressed as a collective who built upon centuries of scientific breakthroughs. It's when the technology gets too economically driven to the point that it is no longer being used to promote the greater good of the general public, that we start to ask ourselves, "What about us?"
me taking a lunch break, to myself, aloud, in west coast america: "c'est perfect timing"
A lot of anti-tech sentiment stems from automation leading to an increase in profit for the bourgeoise and not having the associated decrease amount of work hours for the working class.
agreed! there are some great books about this, like bullshit jobs by david graeber and utopia for realists by rutger bregman. highly recommended reads
I recently deleted many social medias. Mostly because of how much my mental health issues increased because of my life atm. I didn’t realize a decent amount of people were deleting it to. I personally think social media is a great thing but social media addiction is something we need to improve on as teens & a society. I’m not anti media but we should improve what we have otherwise nothing will improve.
westerners call it anti-tech but literally the real anti tech are our grandparents, in my case asian grandparents, lmao they are self sufficient and not glued to social media. funny how this generation finds it aesthetic yet some have capitalized on it with having youtube cottagecore content. countryside life has been doing it ever since.
Always hilarious how the most anti-capitalist people ALWAYS are the most materialistic people on the planet.
I love technology, I just hate most of modern technology because of how the companies behind them operate. Social media is making everyone depressed & lonely, it's making us more and more isolated, they're political extremist resonance chambers, phone addictions are ruining the youth's attention span and coping mechanisms, the new generation of parents are using Ipad's to raise kids instead of having to parent them themselves (I'm 20, I wish I didn't get my phone when I was 12, or at least waited with social media until I was 16).. It's scary what we're doing with our tech when almost all long-term evidence suggests only negative outcomes.
Love this video!! I would be really careful though talking about “Western Countries” in broad strokes like you did in this video in regards to covid vaccine distribution. I live in Japan, who was also one of the first countries to receive vaccines from Moderna and Pfeizer, and is also guilty of hoarding thousands upon thousands of vaccines. Placing the sole blame on some western countries neglects the fact that other non-western countries are also guilty of these awful greedy crimes we see in our hypercapitalist world!
So why can't people just like what they like? Isn't it a good thing that some people have become disenchanted with the mindless, technologically-enhanced consumerism of our society and are choosing to no longer engage with it as much? It's suddenly a bad thing that some people are choosing to PRODUCE their own food and clothing instead of solely relying upon the underpaid labor of overseas workers? Isn't it more environmentally-friendly to grow your own damn tomatoes rather than purchase one that has been shipped half-way across the world and has lower nutritional value? Isn't it a good thing that people want to do something that promotes their mental health (i.e. living closer to nature) as opposed to actively destroying it through social media addictions? And why are we acting like these are inherently "Eurocentric" activities when literally every fucking civilization around the world used to live this way up until the last few hundred years? Seriously, there is no lifestyle more universal than an agrarian, "anti-tech" lifestyle. But I suppose it would hurt someone's TH-cam views if more people were to embrace it, so it's better just to shit all over it.
Steady there, buddy. Being closer to nature and closer to your food ARE good things, but don't forget it is VERY difficult to completely cut yourself adrift. Here we are, communicating, of sorts, through the ether in a "magical way" on devices made by......underpaid labor of foreign workers. If you can't laugh at that, you should.
I don't sense anyone here "doing a duty" on you or your opinions. Whether we are white or not (you, your Robertson name probably gives you away, Alice, and I) are likely we're all European-derived or influenced, but who cares? A Japanese farmer growing cucumbers outside Kyoto has as much inherent cachet as we do. And if he is a good steward and a good person, I call him brother.
Say what you believe and do what makes you feel complete. Let the anger go.
And BTW, I have NO social media accounts, but I do like to chat with thoughtful people on line, on interesting sites like this.
I'm interested in the idea that cottagecore was a direct reaction to the pandemic insofar - it was the retreat to a bucolic ideal to deal with the trauma of the event. A lot of books written during and after the two 20th Century world wars see characters reminiscing about the pre-war ideal. This a specific strand in English culture with the myth of 'deep England' and a shire much like the ones the hobbits live in. Thank you.
Very off topic, but don't you think 'bucolic' is such a horrible word? It sounds like a mix between 'bubonic' and 'choleric'!
@@squidwardsthirdtentacle1198 agree, it doesn't sound like something you'd seek out!
And also a lot of people rediscovered nature because going for a walk or hike was literally the only leisure activity you were allowed to do outside your house (speaking for myself at least)
That reminds me, I recently came across this theory that LOTR is an allegory for industrialization.
@@silverroxen2954 definitely one reading that fits well.
Super interesting topic, thanks for sharing
June 12 Guardian headline: Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient.
Related book recommendation: Bullshit Jobs by the late David Graeber.
When I was a teen Friedrich was my favorite painter, I found his art so melancholic… I loved the crumbling buildings and the little figures against the wide nature
You would really like japanese and Chinese zen art then. Or things closely related. That kind of art tends to focus on putting tiny human figures within a natural landscape. You can probably find modern versions of it as well in case you don't like the linework of the older stuff.
I am currently studying a masters of IT, my girlfriend is a programmer. We have increasingly become anti - tech (especially after we became more involved with programming) and are planning to move to somewhere with more land so I can have a bigger garden. I have a garden already and some days it definitely feels like cottagecore, I find it to be pretty accurate at times - being in my garden with the chickens and ducks is quite blissful and great
This is a very much needed video for me. I’m currently unemployed and looking for a job (but there’s a part of me that wants to be unemployed). Why? The thought of having to work 9-5 and the work culture has made me scared. On top of that, the low wage in my country (Malaysia) is really discouraging. And so, I was enticed with the idea of working from home, making my own bucks. I’m interested in the writing industry. In this process, I would spend a lot of time on the internet, trying to connect with the right person, and it was unbelievably tiring…
Just a few moments ago, before starting to watch your video I felt overwhelmed, but now I felt better. This video is somehow cathartic to me. Thanks, Alice.
On a side note. Check out Work For Impact. There's a lot of jobs there that you can do on your own times.
I think you’d enjoy the book How to Do Nothing. It’s not really self help. It’s more a analysis of the attention economy and taking back ourselves as humans in the earth. It’s critical of leave it all behind comunes.
Yesss How to Do Nothing is amazing!!! I highly recommend Wendy Liu’s book “Abolish Silicon Valley” as well.
For me, it's not technology that's the issue, it's the economic system incentivizing it. Automation is good, but if it were done in a democratic "Star Trek" way, where we are motivated to use it to better life for humanity and not for profit. Through automation, giving people more leisurely time so they can spend it traveling, socializing, being creative, or even just sitting around relaxing is not a bad thing. It's when you don't have a economic system that allows people not to work so much cause they have to in order survive. I often feel these absolutist "return to nature" or "return to analog" movements miss the point. We need a new egalitarian economic system and not this post-capitalist techno-feudalism that we have today.
"The industrial revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
- Funny Bomb Shack Man
Ted Kaczynski was not a philosopher or futurist - he was just a mentally unstable murderer
🤣🤣
Mary Shelley was the OG Anti-Tech Influencer as a follower of the Victorian Romanticism. She literally wrote ‘Frankenstein’ which was about a person using technology for his own ends and then we know what happens.
To be honest, Frankenstein is more of a reflection on the limits of human nature and what happens when you cross those boundaries, but I wouldn't say it's anti-tech. She was undoubtedly questioning science, as her husband Percy was, but both of them were also fascinated by the experiments of scientists like Galvani, who tried to bring dead frogs back to life with electricity.
And she wasn't a follower of the Victorian Romanticism either, she was actually close to the 2nd generation of Romantics and very much an outsider and a pioneer! It's really hard to close her in a strict definition, and I think that this is what makes her a truly relevant figure ❤️
I always read Frankenstein as an indictment of the person rather than the technology.
strongly recommend everyone to read David graeber's essay " of flying cars and the declining rate of profit", the problem with technology today is that it is basically control technology oriented towards the needs of infinite growth instead of "poetic technologies" that really improve the state of all humans in the planet
This addressed some things I've been feeling as well, the constant pressure to post everything online and be plugged in. Can you make a video on how capitalism has eroded public spaces/squares?
This video is even more on point today. Just before the AI started parasitizing on artists, writers, musicians, voice actors...
@@adelrojjas Thats not the same, because to automate that, they didn’t have to steal work and individual property of others.
@@adelrojjas They did however use original works for training.
@@xKessa tbh AI in Voice actors are just either use for fanmade animations plus it's to expensive to hire them just to do simple voices.
Miyazaki's movies are influenced by his ecofeminism, it's far more than just "aesthetic". A wanderer above the sea of fog has a paired painting, Woman before the rising sun.
The notion of progress is not deconstructed enough. What you don't see is that our economic system is what causes us the pains that we resolve with new tech. That's why indigenous communities can't sustain their way of life. They too suffer zoonotic spill and radiation.
If you dislike the way technology affects your life, simply take a break and restrict its influence for a certain amount of time, if possible. Or delete social media accounts. Lived without Facebook for some time, was the happiest person ever.
Unfortunately there is no anti-tech movement. Like highly developed civilizations of the past, we will also collapse on the complexity of the society we have built. It is the wheel of life.
thats why ill become a prepper
What highly developed civilisations of the past?
@@venusianblivet9518 Wait, Wakanda isn't real?!
Top 5 bruh moments in human history:
1 - The Industrial Revolution
I'm a humanities student learning to code. I'm also surrounded by people who work in tech. I used to be really turned off by it but now i find it fascinating. I honestly believe that the only reason our generation feels so trapped by it is that we never got a chance to know what our phones/computers actually do and hence we never got any control over them. Technology makes our lives easier but what's behind it is infinitely complex and its really beautiful to write even the most basic program. I honestly encourage young people to learn to code but not bc you need to have a job in tech, but because understanding technology can genuinely bring you more peace.
There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters
like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.
What is most powerful is to live consciously no matter where you are, create a lifestyle and a reality for yourself that truly resonates with the being that you are growing into. As ALWAYS following trends is simply unhealthy and unsustainable!
I'm tired of people using tech as THE solution when in the end its a tool to find the solution.
Fr
What i find interesting is how anti-positivist people that work in tech from an engineering pov often are. Like surely no one understands technology better than the people that design the stuff...
C. S. Lewis: The abolition of man. Predicted this
ok but, I can't ignore the fact that this movement, it's been promoting through social media and internet...so that's contradictory right?
The cottage core to Uncle Ted pipeline is real.
Oh and I love it.
@@LepiotaI have, he makes a lot of good points, but also several leaps in logic and just out write bad points. He raised some Interesting questions, but I’m still pro-technology
we just want a simple life, the amount of information and choices an average person sees and makes a day is not human. Tech makes us restless. Anti tech will grow. I find most people indorsing tech and not seeing or experiencing negative side effects are boomers. They are not quick with tech and they can easily put their phone away or switch off. They don’t get why you g ppl are fussy about deleting apps etc. But we don’t use tech like boomers, we live it, it uses us, we consume and it consumes us
I’m not a boomer but I’m not anti tech. Social media and tech use to be big part of my life but once I established the relationship that I wanted to have with it, that stopped. Tech is a tool, all things tech are just applications and objects. Younger generations have been thrusted into a world with technology that could be used for almost anything and is also promoted as life changing so it makes sense that it is a big part our lives. It’s easy for boomers to form a laid back relationship with tech but thats not something that younger gens can’t do
This was the longest 15 minute video I've ever seen that said absolutely nothing
That's women for yah
Great video, personally I've found a balance in the tech/nature supposed dichotomy in the realm of Solarpunk (kind of a positive futurism, imaginary alternative to cyberpunk). Gives me hope and shows that, if we have the right mindset, our tech and tools can help us to better thrive in the coming end of the Anthropocene.
Yep, it is all about balance. I also think we should not fear the future.
@@Ana-ty8sl in the bigger picture I also think humanity will eventually sort their shit out, but its sad that so many people and other creatures on the planet have to suffer on the way there
Yes I love to see people talk about solar punk more! I truly believe it is the way forward with the blending of urban and nature/farming
@@happytofu5 yeah I agree. I do think perhaps there will be a future where everyone unites, but how we get there is what troubles me the most.
@@FeyPax yay for solar punk :) I love the concept
im personally anti-social media because of the racism and other hurtful views that are built into the algorythms and are amplified by the platforms. ive deleted twitter, snapchat, and insta, and stopped usong fb. I am much happier now!
What a relief. I have nothing to say or add to the discussion. Going to reflect on this.
Excellent as always, Alice.
I’m extremely puzzled by your video. Frankly, I can’t explain what point you’re attempting, but you’re doing it in a convincing fashion.
Are you saying tech is both bad and good?
That progress is relative and not guaranteed, that we can ONLY count on change?
That the phrase “Be the best you YOU can be is illusional, because we are all operating machines that are (inexorably) running down?
That Bill Gates is hypocritical? (Say it ain’t so!!)
And anyway, that sun dress with the spaghetti ties is VERY distracting and is (likely) producing crass animal thoughts in many of your viewers, but perhaps it’s just my low-brow, no-tech mind speaking when it shouldn’t.
Perhaps I should tune in again?
Is there one (particular) video of yours that will explain what you’re “about”?
And I’m curious, is that an English accent built on top of a tiny-house (but lovely) Eastern European floor plan?
12:12 I’m currently at this point right now, activity feels like an obligation that can only be met by a high intensity work out and eating a bit more than normal makes me feel guilty because I’m aware of how many calories and type of calories I’ve eaten. This isn’t healthy, this isn’t natural, this shouldn’t be normal. This video was awesome! Thanks
I really don't like trends, it pushes people to be tribal. whether is be living this cottage core away from technology life or being that NFT guy. Can we see tech as perhaps in old times books might have been seen a utility to help and share ideas, discuss them.
There Is also a strange religiosity in some strains of these "back to Nature" movements. Ive met people who genuinely believe, that great mother Nature is a conscious deity, that will judge and punish the eco -sinners with disease and disasters
like the coronavirus, while rewarding those, living in arcordance to her will.
I am a computer science student. I will likely spend most of my career working on tech. Which i guess at least partly contributes to my skepticism and dislike of it.
It's not exactly that I think that technology is bad, just that it keeps getting used for worse and worse means every day. We have had the technology to solve some issues, like our fossil fuel dependency (nuclear and more recently solar & wind) and our car dependency (TRAINS!) for literally decades, yet we just don't do it. Newer better technology will not just magically solve everything.
I am also really concerned about the environment and about social issues, and technology seems to constantly get used as a way to dismiss real issues.
Climate change? oh it'll just get solved with innovation. You de-growthers are just genocidal (yes they do call de-growth genocidal)
Inequality? Oh crypto is 'decentralized', don't worry about inequality man, this is the era of the litte guy! (its not)
Racism? There's no racism anymore since people can't see your race behind your avatar (that shit weasel gary vee actually said this)
One thing I really enjoy is tech-bros (usually people with a surface level understanding of technology, or social issues, or both) thinking that I'm a luddite. Assures me that I'm on the right path! I don't use social media, and I'm extremely skeptical about the tech bug creeping its way into more and more aspects of society, and due to our neoliberal capitalist base, corrupting more and more aspects of our societal superstructure and making them more and more transactional. (online dating is like shopping for a car on an app, you're picking out a human (who is now already dehumanized) from a catalogue).
I also really liked your examples about health (exercise - it should come naturally or you should want to do it because you enjoy it, and food - you should eat healthy food that you like in the amounts you feel are right) - water is also getting gamified - you need your 8 cups, so you need an app to get your 8 cups, oh also, water isn't good enough you need special hydration drinks.
The idea that one can just escape from all of these issues by just moving to a small house in the forest or into some other semi-permanent or permanent luxurious retreat is crazy. More alienation and more isolation is not what we need, and it will not help us. We need more community, not less of it.
But i absolutely dread being associated with eco-fascists, and want nothing to do with the 'return to tradition', blood and soil, get-a-tradwife-to-cook-barefoot, cottagecore crowd. Disgusting and and idiotic. I feel that I have to take care to make sure that my tech-skepticism stays as far away from this as possible.
as someone who is about to go to college and major in comp sci, do you have any advice on how to not get involved with the hyper capitalistic/innovation-will-solve-everything tech bros? and just advice in general about studying/working in tech? thanks so much, i really enjoyed reading your comment, i think your perspective is very grounded and astute.
Another computer science student here. What concerns me the most isn’t the excesses of Silicon Valley itself as the fact that the left has completely failed to offer a competing vision. The kind of “decentralization” that crypto bros want is of course yet another inventive way for the rich to avoid contributing to society, the goal is to accelerate centralization of power in reality.
Ironically, some of the methods proposed by the crypto bros are the closest to what the left needs to be doing to gain a foothold, and dismissing them outright while continuing to promote a primarily social democratic approach to change is myopic, outdated and doomed to failure. The idea of building transnational communities with their own laws, objectives and social programs is the only way to combat the primacy of states and achieve social objectives that corrupt legislatures will never pass. Just instead of creating crypto-libertarian phyles, we need to build communities based on consensus and open exchange. The ideal political organization is one in which each level of governance has only the powers it needs to serve the needs of its members, and only problems that cannot be solved at the level of communities are passed further up the chain. We have to build the infrastructure to replace states now.
We should also accelerate the transition to open source as much as possible, emphasizing the role of software as a public good, and create new forms of social media which are aimed not at stealing our data and attention but rather enabling us to work together to build new systems regardless of our locations, creating new systems of education and working towards new systems of governance as outlined above.
@@leilaschrof529 Sadly I think most of us will have to work on alternative solutions in our free time while maintaining an income from more conventional tech jobs. But the more of us there are, the better chance we have to build a movement and work together on more ethical projects.
By the way, you guys should check out “Abolish Silicon Valley” by Wendy Liu. Her critique is quite interesting, the only weak part to me is that I feel she underestimates the problematic nature of centralization, like most on the left.
But TH-cam is social media. And here we are.
Its simple. Use tech to your advantage. If you use tech passively, tech will use you to its advantage. Like a peasant to the tech lords. If your aware its a choice, and you cannot be considered a victim.
Couldn't it be said that van-life or tiny-house, etc. etc., are a form of the great refusal ala Marcuse? Sometimes detaching yourself from the political system is the most political thing you can do. While, obviously, there are some very clear limitations to this, and it is typically white people that have very little to lose by resigning from "civilization"-in a time where everything is political, being apolitical is a political decision.
Also, the idea of a "pipeline" when speaking about cottage core seems reminiscent of the slippery slope argument (fallacy). I.E. marijuana is a pipeline to harder drugs or socialism as a pipeline to a totalitarian, repressive form of communism.
Since technology is almost only being developed under the guidance of capitalist values, it seems impossible to disconnect technological advancements to the status quo. Idk.
If you're ready to go full hardcore on anti-tech, then read Theodore Kaczynski's two books, Technological Slavery and Anti-Tech Revolution. But warning: once you go full hardcore red-pill on tech, there's no going back.
I work with computers and cell phones daily, but with the development of AI I'm quite scared. I'm scared of people eventually running out of employment possibilities because everything can be done by a robot, or making robots more like humans and humans more like robots (like the ideas some people have of merging humans with robots).
I'll have to watch your tiny house video too in order to gain context and see if your stance really is the false binary that I'm currently perceiving ... but in my experience, the tiny house movement has a lot of political activism entrenched into it, at least in my region (and I imagine this does vary regionally, now that I think about it more).
Here in Colorado and in much of the USA, the tiny house community is inextricable from activism about updating building codes themselves to even allow real tiny homes (they're illegal in many if not most places in the USA), along with activism about our homelessness crisis, and activism about sustainable living.
So yeah, again, I'm sure this varies regionally, but figured I should toss this info out there 🤷♂️ Most things aren't really very monolithic. I do totally agree though with the criticism of tiny house/vanlifer communities being very privileged, at least for the most part. I've been unhoused pretty consistently for about a decade now myself and thus vehicle life very much originally chose me, so it's been very strange seeing people recently popularizing vanlife and spending tens of thousands of dollars for a glamorous version of the lifestyle I get harassed and honked at for on a regular basis just because I can't afford to do it aesthetically lol. There are definitely lots of weird sick ironies to that whole phenomenon and it's good to see it being criticized.
Read Technopoly by Neil Postman
I am an Absolute fan of constant progress however i very much dislike the brutalist approach to it. I dont need to live in a glass cube, i can just place a WiFi-Router in my 1700 Half-Timbered-House.
Add "value" to a community. What even does mean? Not terrifying but that is like a marketing gimmick.
Now all jargon about technology is about profit, money, money, money, no wonder a few people had enough of it and become anti-tech.
I don't really consider myself anti-tech (though I don't own a dryer because they are NOISY, I tolerate my washer because it is small and I don't have enough spoons to wash all our clothes and linens by hand), but I do consider myself pretty anti-capitalism. Which, ultimately feeds into the reason the Luddites came to be. If automation had made factory work safer and faster, so workers could spend less of their days working in a safer environment without losing wages, I think they would have been happy with that arrangement. But profit over people lead to demonization of the machine and not the factory owners.
I saw how they extract the minerals that make the batteries for this stuff, and I have to say, taken all together, this technology is a curse. Suddenly we "need" it, though. Thank god it's fragile. In a hundred years, when they're cooking rats over a camp fire they'll have no idea what all this garbage is.
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
BASED
TEDPILLED
They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.
@@andriy2349 They have greatly increased everyone's life expectancy, not just in advanced countries. That's kind of the problem in countries like Chad that you have huge old birth rates, but European technology permits them to survive. Then this populations moves to advanced countries due to permissive immigration, ruining the effect of low birth rates.
Genetic modification and the authoritarian surveillance state will destroy humanity. We will become manufactured automatons.
Just a small detail, at 1:03 you show a medium article named "Were more troops sent to quash the Luddites than to fight Napoleon?" while saying "Legal and military
force was used against the protestors", that was done in bad faith, because the implication you make in the video is that they were, but if you look up the article, they clarify: "not even close" as the total number deployed to against the Luddites was tens of thousands units less than troops to fight Napoleon.
I wouldn't consider myself a luddite, but im honestly just tired of it all and how desensitized ppl are to recording everything and everyone no privacy ever whether you fall in public or in your house being intimate with a partner anything and everything keeps getting recorded with or without consent, nobody even talks to one abother anymore because they're too into their phones. Plus i hate how much ppl post their kids online when they know there are so many predators online. I dont want to completely cut technology probably just social media ive honestly been considering buying a flip phone and only using that.😭😭 ive already deleted tiktok, and snapchat i want to delete instagram and youtube nect but my husband wants me to keep instagram so he can show me videos of cats, but i dont understand how social media has bevome so intertwinded in todays world and i just wish it eould end i long for the days when i could be a kid in peace without someone shoving a phone in my face.
Cottage core being a form of n-zi propaganda is a bizarre connection. I just thought it was another type of escapism to avoid the stress of modern life and city living. An excuse to lay in a bed of flowers under the sun in flouncy skirts and pastels.
I'm not anti-tech...but sometimes social media is too much for me
Techies help with gentrification. Inequalities. And adds to not being social or having roots in local community.
had cancer, thanks to technological progress I got cured
Millions more people are alive today due to progress, that would not have been here otherwise.
It raises some philosophical questions.
haven’t watched it yet but i recently deleted all social media (except yt obviously and reddit) and i’ll tell you it’s 1000x better. next is to get rid of reddit lol
Alice should make a video about cyberpunk
i really love the quiet and clear way you talk. You just sound like a chill person - you've got a new subscriber :)
my smartphone broke like a few weeks ago. but now i only have one laptop. and to be honest i don't think i will get a smart phone again. i love technology, but i think i don't need a smartphone. and also i hate these extremist ideas like either no tech or everything tech. i think the truth here is in the middle. i think some tech is stupid and i am against them like tik tok and smart phones, but electric motor and even crypto i think these tech actually make your life better.
Crypto is a scam lol like a NFT even Keanu reeves laugh's at it for being stupid plus the Golden age of the internet is over anyway it died since 2016
@@joandarc441 cryptocurrency is a technology. Well more specifically the block chain is a technology that is useful. Not just in cryptocurrencies. Think of things like scientific data, people can't just create data out of thin air. Basically if you understand the block chain you will see a lot of potential.
Also about crypto. US dollar is as scam as crypto but we believe in it. Imagine if we believed in crypto you wouldn't say it is a scam.
And internet is another tool that people use in a wrong way. If you go back to the beginning it was used for scientist.
I believe internet is ultimately only useful for sharing thoughts and science. Like what we are doing rn.
Great video as always Alice 😊 I love how you bring amazing context to trending topics
Thank you Lucy ! ✨
The anti-tech sentiments are largely reactions of confusion or frustration.
The constant implementation and optimization of technology means an increasing complexity. When people become aware that the technology that USED to be used to make our lives simpler are now instead CREATING angles to complicate our lives the virtue of technology is lost.
An example:
Sure my iPhone 13 is a marvel of modern technology but now I’m complicating my life with payments, accounts, passwords, charging cycles, and an endless invasive connection to the internet.
Technology, rather than being a deflationary effect on the necessity of our lives has now created and enabled such a thorough degree of commoditization that the deflationary effect is being reversed by the selfish feedback loops of liberalism.
No.
"haha let's see what's really underneath addictive tech"
"oh no, it's capitalism! AGAIN!"
im sorry but i dont really get the point of this video... can someone explain it to me?
I think the ideology that glorifies progress, while ignoring that this progress is a passtime for wealthy people, while millions and billions of people aren't even having access to the basics is so important, it should be the title of the video and spread around more! That point is so important.
hi Alice! I don't know if you will see this, but I was wondering if you would consider doing a video jumping off of this "anti-tech" movement and diving into the world of "trad LARPing" that's an extension of this and running rampant in its delusions (an example that comes to mind would be yt creator isabel paige + basically any cottagecore shit) ~ I've just been thinking about this issue a lot lately and it's very interwoven with what you are discussing here and so I think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts and see where exploring this topic might take you. anyways, just a thought! had to launch it ~ bisous, b
I second this for a video idea!!
I’m not against tech, I’m against the overstimulation produced by the extremely unmoderated use of it. regards from Manhattan
I love how you tie in anti-tech with the idea of self-optimizing yourself in every way. Such an interesting take! thanks :)
The idea of counting callories, your sleep, your nutrients to become the most fullest person you can be is very masculine. Like training super soldiers. It speaks to me because i think very masculine. Thats who i am. I do agree on your point about beeng more intiutive, and thats what i want to work on to. Integrating some feminine traits as a male can enrich myself and others. Its a balancing act, different for each person.
The whole cottagecore aesthetic makes me laugh because their idea of nature is no more natural than a McDonald's cheeseburger. Farmland is equally manmade as a city block is.
Internet Shaquille made a short called "The Masculine Urge to Live In the Woods" where he basically says that all these "return to tradition" folks have no idea how difficult farming actually is.
Its easy to make an argument against a strawman.