Quiche Industries
Terry Godierš¢ New Essay:
"What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?"
millennial fulcrum@tg I wasn't aware I feel exhausted, thank you for letting me know (but you may want to check your sources on that š)
I've never met or heard of anybody who thought exhaustion was a moral failing. what a silly moral system would that be!
it sounds like there may be a touch of projection going on there my friend. I'll be honest, it has put me off reading this particular piece (although it won't hold me back from subsequent ones).
all the best getting your point out there. š»
@falcennial i don't think exhaustion is a moral failing, i think the industry that puts the blame on you for having a lot of screentime is the problem.
I'm talking entirely about how I feel in the essay, so the projection is absolutely true, not just a touch!
OberstKrueger@tg Since your last essay about RSS readers led to you releasing an RSS reader, I can only surmise that you are about to release your own watch. Or a car!
Great read. Every few years I go through a period of really trying to cut the chatter down on my devices. At the same time, things like health tracking on my watch are important. So Iām trapped to an extent playing this game with the whole modern tech ecosystem.
@OberstKrueger ha! no plans for a watch or a car. or really anything. the secret is the rss reader was already in development for several months!
i feel the same way, re: health/etc on the watch. I still have one and I do still wear it :)
solastalgia kris āļøš§š²@tg fascinating insight! For a while now something has not felt right to me with all those digital detox/digital minimalism write-ups floating around, I even saw that was particularly infuriating that went something like "what, you want to take photos to remind you of special occasions? Bro just improve your photographic memory! You don't need a smartphone!" And it dialed home how detached from reality these pieces were becoming. But your article really nails down on what the real problems are
Russ Shanahan@tg brilliant, thank you for sharing this.
Pedro Cora@tg this is phenomenal!!
tibo@tg This may sound made up, but when I read that it was 8:39 on the Casio on your wrist, it was exactly 8:39 on the Casio on my wrist. That was a bit unsettling.
I really enjoyed the essay.
I really enjoyed the essay.
evie@tg i finally read this and itās good! i wonder how this relates to more āhobbyistā devices like the pebble. my pebble will break about every 2 to 3 days on average, requiring me to force disconnect and reconnect it, but outside of that it very rarely bothers me and i can configure the settings to make it bother me even less. i wonder where the trade-off is for self hosting? i hear friends that self-host talk about the reduction in cognitive load that comes from no longer needing to think about their stuff being held hostage. technically it just works because they own the whole machine, but also more basic IT is on them. interesting perspectives, because we live in a world powered by tech, so no matter what, we need to have some amount of tech to maintain the conveniences.
Red_Shirt_no2@tg
This somehow reminds me of Elaine Leeās prophetic quip from the early 1980s: āYou gain access to them; _they_ gain access to _you_.ā
This somehow reminds me of Elaine Leeās prophetic quip from the early 1980s: āYou gain access to them; _they_ gain access to _you_.ā
Tom Striker@tg Beautifully executed!
The bit about wellness apps reminded me how about three years into existence, Headspace suddenly started pushing notificationsāevents you had to attend, packs you just had to try. It was entirely quiet before. It made me sad a bit; the marketing machine had eaten the little quiet app.
The bit about wellness apps reminded me how about three years into existence, Headspace suddenly started pushing notificationsāevents you had to attend, packs you just had to try. It was entirely quiet before. It made me sad a bit; the marketing machine had eaten the little quiet app.
Carl C@tg I just read this and I can't articulate the mood I'm in.
r/Gen-X folks keep saying "life wasn't really simpler in the 80's, you're just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses."
But it _was_ simpler, for all the reasons your essay points out. The Internet has let devices complicate our lives in so many unnecessary, unintentional ways.
Alexandre Franke@tg loved the form as much as I loved the text. I canāt help but think that my mechanical wrist watch really is the quiet thing though, as unlike yours it wonāt beep. š
Coralie Mercier
Sara Joy 
Andrea Barisani@tg Thank you for this.
"Musty Bits" McGee
Joshua Byrd
FoolishOwl@tg It's like another facet of commodity fetishism. Our relationships with other people require attention and nurturing; "dynamic" understates it as we are our relationships. But we are increasingly taught to see them as static, contractual, transactional, mechanical.
Meanwhile, our tools, which are supposed to be mere extensions of our will, which are supposed to lie quietly in drawers until needed, as they did for the first few hundred thousand years of human life, demand our constant attention.
We are weak, alone, and afraid, and it is no accident.