The Straw Man
THE world is full of technology. It is abundant, maybe overabundant. Some countries have more technology than others. Some countries are more reluctant to adopt technology (or are selective about which technology). It typically boils down to trust, cost/benefit analysis, and who controls the technology. Some countries export a lot of technology and some mostly import technology. Some try to use technology to control other countries, and some tweak the technology from another country for domestic purposes.
Many users of technology are nowadays not in control of the technology (in spite of paying for it, "owning" it, feeding energy to it). It's the technology that's made to control the users. It's a paradigm change. It demands a rethink.
One "modern" form of technology is "smart" 'phones' (not really!) with so-called 'apps'. Some of us reject them. Most do carry them. Many government wrongly assume that everyone carries around such a gadget. We wrote a great a deal about this issue, both here and in related sites. CyberShow covered the issue a week ago (in passing). Andy (known for his book 'Digital Vegan') said "I am a computer scientist who doesn't have a smartphone" and "you'd have to be clinically insane to have one".
But here comes the grudge, with all sorts of insulting terms like "primitive", "Luddite", and "paranoid" (I heard that last one at Sirius, which had stolen workers' money; apparently my colleagues and I were not paranoid enough, so we got defrauded).
Anyway, beware the "binary" condition wherein one is either "for" or "against" technology. It is never as simple as this. There are good things and bad things. It would be wrong to frame that as a binary question, wherein if you reject technology X, then you reject ALL technology. We see this all the time when people are reluctant to give some personal details or turn down some gadget with worthless gimmicks. For sure there are still some good technologies around and going back to old methods isn't always preferable. Imagine having to sum up with pen and paper 200 items you buy at the grocery store; likewise, a gas-powered hob is both inflexible and dangerous; I'd not even leave the kitchen with the gas turned on and as a kid I remember many incidents of gas leaks.
Painting everything new as a "novelty" is a way to shoehorn badly-designed and negative things, spinning them as inevitable and desirable. UEFI is a good example of this and Red Hat has been eager to help Microsoft do that [1, 2]. Since 2012 we've blasted Red Hat for it and even 12 years later we get abused over this, even though time has proven us right (all along). Now we have some Red Hat cretin sending people "phonebook"-sized bundles bragging about one's importance as if it's some job application selling oneself after abusing people in IRC, trying to undermine meaningful discussions and discrediting the forum by flooding it with junk, bait, even illegal stuff.
Anyway, enough of the scarecrow. No more straw man arguments. They just try to shame and scare people into accepting "modern" handcuffs. █
