Here is something nobody says plainly: Sometime in the last twenty years, our possessions came alive.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. One by one, the objects in our lives opened their eyes, found our faces, and began to need us.
Your thermostat has opinions now. Your television requires a login. Your car updates itself overnight, and sometimes when you start it in the morning, the interface has rearranged itself, as if someone broke in and reorganized your dashboard while you slept.
Your earbuds won’t play music until they’ve updated their firmware. Your refrigerator wants to be on your Wi-Fi.
None of this is broken. This is the product functioning as designed.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot with my relationship to tech.
I love the tech I own, but I want to make it all…quieter. Reducing notifications, reducing subscriptions, reducing time…
…but what does it say that we all need to do these sort of things, and make these sort of considerations?
Food for thought.