What's a computer?

One of the biggest changes to my life since I stepped away from social media is my relationship with computers and tech in general. Honestly, I generally don’t care anymore and overall that has been a good thing. I think. There is much, much more to this than just stepping away from my last bastion of social media (Mastodon). The combination of A.I., hardware pricing, and my focus on my burgeoning landscaping business.

When I think more about it, the single biggest catalyst is my work. I’m 4 years into being a partner in a landscape contracting business with my brother. I mentioned a couple posts ago that business has been growing and this year is our busiest year, ever. Why this has impacted my relationship with tech isn’t because I’m so busy, but because it is nearly completely unnecessary to follow anything tech related. Tech is no longer important to my livelihood. I used to follow it closely and actively participate in tech trends because I knew being “tech forward” was a massive benefit to my career in marketing. I don’t need to know anything about what Apple, Google, Facebook, or any other tech behemoth is up to as it has almost zero impact on my income. I wake up, phone rings. I work hard to do great work, phone rings more. We don’t advertise. We don’t post on any social network. We don’t do SEO. All we do is install the best fucking sprinkler systems and customers find us.

This connects directly with A.I.. I don’t need to know jack shit about A.I., from a work and career standpoint. Yes, I follow the news so I am aware of scams, fakes, etc. But, I have no reason to care about models, tokens, tooling, or anything else related to A.I. and its the most trendy thing in tech at the moment, love or hate it.

Hardware pricing is severely disappointing, though. I wish pricing wasn’t the way that it is. I often see something neat piece of kit and before I’ll even look at specs I go straight to the price and then close the tab. Seeing new hardware frequently over $2,500 USD is soul crushing, especially for us low income folk. When new mid to high tier laptops were $1,200 I knew I could wait 3-4 years and then get my hands on it at a price I could afford. Starting at $2,500 means it is forever out of my range. Its hit me harder than I am probably willing to admit and has had a significant impact on my enthusiasm to follow hardware. I know I’m not the only person to feel this way.

The last thing that has changed my relationship with tech is my age. I just turned 44. I have two adult children, one of which is getting married in about 4 months. Overall, I just don’t give a shit what is happening in the world. My company is busy. My life is busy. I can’t be bothered to keep up with whatever is happening on The Verge or Android Authority. Hell, so many articles are either written or poorly edited by A.I. its pointless to read anything on tech sites anyway. Even the stuff written by humans has taken a serious quality hit. My 5th grader writes better than whatever tech sites are hiring nowadays.

These are the reasons I post infrequently here. I go days, even weeks, without looking at a computer other than my phone. I actually spend more time making stickers on my wife’s Cricut than anything computer related. Even when I have some free time, I get out my laptop, and sit at my desk, I spend the whole time just sitting there staring at my keyboard.

I have fought this feeling for a long time (and posted about it a lot). I tried to hang onto computers as my hobby. But, man, I couldn’t care less at this point.

I guess you could say I “escaped”, what so many folk are trying to do. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the excitement of a new discovery. When I first got into homelabbing it consumed me. I was ecstatic to get on my computer every day. I haven’t found something that has brought that level of excitement in a long, long time. There are other hobbies out there, I’m just too poor to participate. That is still the lingering sadness over losing tech as a hobby. But with these prices, I’m forever locked out.

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