The literal cost of using the modern web slapped me in the face just now. It got me thinking…
This is one of those things that inspires me to think about what life would be like if I gave up being as involved with the web as I currently am.
I could save the desktop for mostly offline work, with limited access to the web saved purely for uploading/sharing stuff, and then rely mostly on mobile computing. This could fit in with spending more time outside, taking my new main computer with me, and generally avoid the muck of tracking-based platforms of services.
IDK… maybe becoming “anti-connected” to some degree. Essentially reverse my general trend of the past decade and switch much more of my focus to the people near me. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as involved with the web because I simply wouldn’t have the time or other resources, as part of an intentional decision to free myself of the misery that is the modern web.
However! I could still work on TIL. I mean, the beauty of Micro.blog is that I don’t have to sell my soul to really understand it, test things out, etc.
A lot of these thoughts have become possible thanks to moving to Firefox. Between the Containers feature and lack of focus on the Google silo, it really has helped me to think about what I am doing on the web through a lens of pragmatism and with a greater degree of transparency.
It’s time for me to think about this in a real way, to make changes that are practical. I actually think it will help a lot with TIL, since it lines up nicely with the philosophies upon which Micro.blog was built. In particular it’s the idea of a “good web”, in which we have the ability to control our online presence and not have to accept a life lived as little more than value-based data, a faceless thing there to be used for the efforts of other people to increase their ill-gotten gains.
This is a lot of meta-style talk, which I didn’t want to spend so much time on in public posts. However, it is a significant process for me on a number of levels and I would like to have a public record of my thinking as I go through the process of making the aforementioned changes over the next few months.
