Bonum Certa Men Certa

My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part X — Happy New Year: Thoughts for 2022 and Beyond



By Dr. Andy Farnell

Series parts:

  1. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part I — 2021 in Review
  2. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part II — Impact of a 'COVID Year'
  3. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part III — Lost and Found; Losing the Mobile Phone (Cellphone)
  4. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part IV — Science or Scientism?
  5. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part V — Change in Societal Norms and Attitudes
  6. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part VI — The Right Words
  7. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part VII — Staying the Course and Fake It Till You Make It?
  8. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part VIII — Who Teaches the Teachers?
  9. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part IX — Hard Reckonings: The Nine Circles of E-Waste
  10. YOU ARE HERE ☞ Happy New Year: Thoughts for 2022 and Beyond


Andy Farnell



Summary: Dr. Andy Farnell (above) offers some positive words of encouragement and optimism as this series concludes

Thanks for reading my review of 2021, my first official year as a Digital Vegan. Lest you think that it's in any way a negative philosophy, let me change your mind. The most frequent critical personal comment I get is that I'm by far too much an optimist.



"...the European Patent Office (EPO) looks lost to all hope of reform."I feel optimistic that many techno-doom stories are passing teacup storms. It's the spirit of our age that we ruminate on our worst nightmares, egged on by fear-mongers. AI isn't a thing. Machine learning ain't all it's puffed up to be. Its dark faces are mainly manifestations of existing malevolent social cybernetics now illuminated by computing progress. We ought to attack those root causes and the maniacs pushing them, not attack promising technologies.



Face recognition may be banned in Europe within a year along with killer drones and illegal mass surveillance. I can imagine a future when the CCTV cameras in our streets are taken down - perhaps only because visual surveillance has shifted to more effective and invisible modes. With respect to rights, "to be forgotten", "to repair and reverse engineer what we own", "to choose free software", "to use end-to-end encryption free from backdoors"… Europe is on the right track.



Certainly there is corruption in Europe - so bad in fact that the European Patent Office (EPO) looks lost to all hope of reform. However, if the new government of Germany is really what it seems, it may be time to put some faith in the rule of law and institutions again, however weak they seem now. In 2022 the ECJ is likely to let individuals bring actions against foreign tech-giants. Unexpectedly our UK DPA has not diverged from GDPR and the Online Safety Bill, despite some authoritarian attacks on speech and privacy, bolsters other rights and is empowering against big-tech abusers.



"E-waste will come into mainstream discourse in 2022 and campaigns to "not buy a new phone" will likely meet brutal resistance and disinformation from the industry and become a speech/censorship battleground."Going forward, we'll figure out how to recycle our phones more and use them less. E-waste will come into mainstream discourse in 2022 and campaigns to "not buy a new phone" will likely meet brutal resistance and disinformation from the industry and become a speech/censorship battleground. Regardless, because of rising environmental and ethical awareness the technological society will have to find a place for all four 'R's, recycling, reuse, reduction and rejection. All-together these support resilience through functional diversity. A technological society without space for dissent and abstinence will fail.



Other things I am hopeful for, 5G and anti-vac paranoia will fade with renewed popular belief in science and continued total absence of evidence (which is not evidence of absence) of harm. Maybe Bezos, Branson and Musk will stop their dick-waving so that personal vanity space tourism where each passenger's trip unleashes a lifetime CO2 use, becomes a mark of shame, not pride. Further along, in post-pandemic boom, I think the passing of paranoia and closer human contact will unleash a new wave of humanist thinking around tech. Education and health-care can undergo healing and restoration. And the world, albeit a warmer one, will keep turning.



I'll still be a Digital Vegan - an Electronic Epicurean - because it's a philosophy of celebrating good technology. That means rejecting bad technology, and much of my thought will still be defined by what I don't do. Like rejecting people who behave as if it's only a means to dominate and extract rent from others. Like eschewing uncritical and stuck behaviours, passive assent to technological abuse, and helpless claims it's all "inevitable". It means embracing smaller groups, less travel, slower technology, more meaningful technology geared toward conviviality.



"The bad-old world died a little, not you."Yes, Digital Veganism is also about "changing the world" and "social justice", but changing the world is not about stopping bulldozers, Neo-Luddism, blocking traffic, daubing slogans, toppling statues, vandalising 5G masts, shouting down speakers, DDOSing servers, or handing out pamphlets. Those are easy things because they externalise struggle.



The really hard stuff is the little things that actually change our own lives and souls in a way that is dangerously infectious. I act because I am following my heart (The Path, The Way, The Force) and assert that is a good enough reason on its own. I don't need to justify why I think Microsoft, Facebook and Google are grotesquely immoral catastrophes for humanity (although I could write a book on it). I simply refuse to let them touch my life, and that's the end of it.



Take courage. If your Digital Vegan thing pisses-off even your closest friends for a while, you're probably in to something real. Follow that moral instinct. Do things that are embarrassing, make yourself feel small, excluded or weird in a world where social non-conformity feels like death. Then realise, you're still alive and it didn't hurt. It felt good. The bad-old world died a little, not you.



"The system relies on you being a hopelessly lazy and insecure narcissist who cares more about the judgement of others than your love for them."Now watch those friends congratulating you. They want to be a little more like you. These repeated acts of social self-immolation are deadly to the status quo. The system relies on you being a hopelessly lazy and insecure narcissist who cares more about the judgement of others than your love for them. It needs you to be comfortable and greedy for the latest powerful hardware, for skin-deep accolades, and rituals of conspicuous waste - not a soldier who adapts, improvises and overcomes to achieve more with less. It cannot adapt to fatal strategies.



Instead, make it awkward for others to not support you in what are very reasonable and modest requests, so that the absurdity of our silent acquiescence is forced to a head. Don't feed the machine. As philosopher Rick Roderick put it "People aren't afraid of dying any more, they're afraid of being seen wearing the wrong trainers." Put on a pair of the wrong trainers and join me in a little mischievous Digital Veganism in 2022.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
 
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
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Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
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GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
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The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
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Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
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Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
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Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
Links for the day
"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
"People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
GAFAM must be worried
Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
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The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
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Links 02/09/2025: SCO Summit and Russia Suspected Of Jamming GPS
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The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
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Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
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Links 02/09/2025: Attacks on Unions, Microsoft TCO, and DDoSing a Growing Problem
Links for the day
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GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
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Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
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We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
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