When I was first transitioning from aviation to tech my computer looked like a dumping ground for any app so much as mentioned online.
I remember the first time I took an “inventory” of my laptop for a work project and it over 300 apps on it. I also remember when I first started using a password manager (around 2010-ish) and had over 500 accounts in it.
I was a digital hoarder. It wasn’t that those apps or accounts made me more productive. It’s that I fell for the hype and tried literally everything that crossed my screen. I think it’s safe to say I spent more time managing apps than getting work done.
From too much to too little
Fast-forward about 10 years or so and I had the opposite problem. Instead of too many apps I was forgoing tasks I needed to do because I would avoid installing anything new.
In those days my phone (first Android in 2020 and then iPhone in 2021) had a total of 7 or 6 apps (7 for Android, 6 when I moved to iPhone) and my laptop had 3. I had gone from a hoarder to a minimalist ideologue and it also wasn’t productive.
Being productive without being a hoarder
If you’re active in communities such as Mastodon (still my favorite social network today), you will wind up being scolded for nearly anything you use. The idea that any tool “I” don’t need is bad is prevalent and the shaming can get annoying.
While this is most prevalent on Mastodon that’s not the only place you’ll see it. Anywhere politics is prevalent you’ll see people shaming each other for using tools they need to use and it can get frustrating.
I bought into the “everything is bad” trend for far too long and I’m done with it.
That isn’t to say there isn’t harmful tech. Networks like X, Facebook and others go out of their way to cause harm to communities and beyond. They’re also easy to leave and worthy of boycott.
When it comes to software like your operating system, however, everything is problematic to someone. Apple and Microsoft are bowing to evil politics but so is some of Linux. Distros like Omarchy aren’t just bowing to evil politics but building it in as a feature of its community.
The explicit politics of a projects leaders or org isn’t the only issue. Linux, for example, had spent years ignoring glaring accessibility issues in core pieces of tech such as Wayland.
The idea that any of these techs is “good” is then just a joke but turning off all tech is still not an option for most.
Today I don’t have accounts on most big tech platform. I don’t have any personal accounts on Meta, Google or Microsoft directly (though work uses Google and I have a GitHub account). I avoid the most problematic tech like most generative AI and others and I try to direct my usage to more open platforms where I can.
The catch is where I can’t.
I still work almost entirely in Apple’s ecosystem, both professionally and personally.
I still need tools to actually work on programs in languages such as Go, PHP, JavaScript and Python.
I still need to access services such as banking and airlines and others necessary in our world in 2025.
At this point I’m OK with all of that.
Where I can I will steer my usage to products and services who have values that clearly align with my own, but I literally cannot do that for everything.
Everyone online uses problematic tech at some point. We don’t have to celebrate that, and we should look for more ethical alternatives. What we should not do is beat ourselves up or shame others for the tools they need to use.
For me, at least, this is helping lead me to a much better place with my tech.