Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because bloated, always-connected proprietary software makes you worse off; its goal is to keep your mind occupied/exploited to the vendor's benefit
When Professor Eben Moglen (a Professor of Law, formerly a programmer, hence tech-savvy) was more active, i.e. before health issues and prior to campaigns of defamation against him, he gave some good talks about how "modern" technology created far too much distraction and was metabolising our attention. This relates to the well established concept of mental clutter, which is loosely connected to physical clutter and sensory overload (e.g. working in a room full of people who make what the late Aaron Swartz referred to as "white noise buzzing around on every side"), the evil identical twin of sensory deprivation. In prisons, both had been studied as a form of torture (e.g. song playing in a loop or no light) and were then weaponised.
People who are angry or time-conscious, for instance, will find it harder to develop ideas. Merely keeping a sixth sense of time ("oh, I need to be in a meeting in 25 minutes") can be very detrimental to one's train of thought or processing of information. A phonecall being received while one runs, writes, or tests code can be ruinous too. Even a 10-second call can cause 10 minutes' worth of damage to one's net work progress*. Focus is key; people must concentrate.
In my experience, which is limited because I avoid proprietary software, the more "mainstream" programs are based around distraction. The "mainstream" "normies" make fun of people who use emacs for almost everything, or those who have vi(m) running in a terminal (nano is also OK), but who's to say the bloated stuff increases output in proportion to the bloat? It's that same braindead or defective mindset which says LLMs must be very good and useful because they use up a ton of energy (that's the fake-coin mentality, where "work" gets measured in megawatts, not actually measurable and meaningful, objective yardsticks).
In my experience, people who write their articles in vim or emacs (Andy, I assume, still does this) produce much better work than those who use office suites and resort to LLMs. One possible explanation is that people smart enough to use emacs and recognise why it's a fine tool for the job will also have wittier things to say and generally be more articulate. An alternative explanation might reverse this: people who focus on minimalism can better develop their thinking and methods. They "get ahead" in class and are appreciated not for how new their laptop is (the smarter ones don't have any "smart" "phone" at all) but for what they actually produce. The real objectives. You don't need a fancy gadget to check the time. Sometimes handwritten notes are more accessible (and faster to access) than anything else; crib notes on the hand became a bad stereotype, almost like finger tattoos, but some people still do that. It works for them.
Would it be fair to say that proprietary software can make people dumber? Rather than be favoured among dumber people? The causality is the hard part, not the correlation. In my entire lifetime I never met a Free software user/developer who was dumb. Not even assessing them based on code; also language skills (vocabulary, number of languages, fluency) and analytical stuff.
The smear goes something along the lines of, "you need to have a Ph.D. to use Linux" (of course people who say this nonsense never even tried GNU/Linux). A better explanation might be, while some people are busy rebooting, removing viruses and working extra time to buy their "new" PC (because 5 years is "old") some other people are busy learning and developing practical skills, not how to remove viruses. Also, they don't work their arses off trying to pay some mortgage, car payments (instalments), and shop for "new" equipment (because the fridge with a tablet on it "stopped working" after 2 years) and the "smart" home thingies with DRM in them can no longer contact the server (the manufacturer/distributor went out of business).
Making smart decisions makes life easier. Making smart decisions typically means rejecting 'smart' things and also proprietary software, where the goal is to "engage" or addict the user. Yes, they use the word "users", just like drugs dealers do. █
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* Just two days ago we recalled how a friend would sit there in the changing room in the gym answering E-mails on his phone as if he was being efficient and productive; I'd tell him, quit wasting time here, go home where you have a proper keyboard, get it all done a lot faster. The iPhone-wrangling types don't get much work done, but Apple confuses them through FOMO and Pavlov's dogs-like experiments ("attention"-craving alarms with bells); The iPhone-wrangling types don't get much work done, but they're made to feel otherwise; in a restaurant, instead of eating and enjoying the food they're busy taking photos and checking rather unimportant notifications. It's not only bad use of time; it's also rude to others at the table.