Not Everything Should be Electric
This morning I purchased a hand saw for use on branches or trunks in the garden. It was actually challenging to find one; most people were trying to sell chainsaws, electric or petrol-powered chainsaws, which are not just expensive but clearly an overkill given the simplicity and scale of the task (in a very small garden). More worryingly, many vendors seem to not know what "saw" means, so one must resort to hand and body language (demonstrating or animating the sawing with gestures and hand motions). At the end I found one for a modest pound and got back home.
The task at hand is so simple, why are people trying to overcomplicate our lives with things that we don't need? To make more money? Should they also remove screwdrivers from displays and try to sell us all electric drills made in sweatshops and made to last not even a decade of minimal use (at most once a year in most households)?
Similarly, where can one still purchase a new car without computers inside it? According to this recent talk [1, 2], some cars makers now subsidise and sell at a loss cars for the sole person of collecting passengers' and drivers' data, then selling that data.
Not interested, sorry...
We need to get accustomed to the idea that rejecting electric appliances where "analogue" things work equally well and typically last vastly longer (fewer "moving parts" that can break) isn't obscene and is in fact common sense, nothing to be ashamed on. If your friends or peers judge you as a person based on the gadgetry you possess and carry around (flaunt), maybe you hang around with the wrong people - the sorts of people who stare at a skinnerbox when you politely sit down to chat with them (because the "apps" are valued more than your physical presence).
In a lot of ways technology has become detrimental to society because the technology promoted/marketed (sometimes subsidised) is designed to serve not us but companies that wish to sell us over and over again overpriced, flaky, made-to-fail appliances. █
Image source: Construction Site Workers Tools