I still remember the excitement of coming home and always looking forward to the latest technological news of the day. I grew up during the perfect time where every day, there’d be a major new announcement about a video game console, a new Nokia phone, the shift from Nokia to Blackberry, the focus on security, and the constant breach of said security. I grew up during the time when, “twice as fast,” was a yearly and necessary improvement. I grew up during a time when the processors got more cores and the MegaHertz were turning to GigaHertz and staying there. I grew up during the time where accelerometers and gyroscopes were making phones and games more intuitive and fun. I got to play the Wii, which I know I will maintain for the rest of my life as being the most inspired piece of tech ever created for its time.

I loved formatting my computer. I loved infecting my computer. I downloaded movies and waited excitedly overnight for them to download. I’d watch the films on my awkward twirling chair and feel accomplished that I’d done some impossible technological feat. I loved figuring out the different video formats, converting a dot AVI to a dot MP4 and it had to be a specific kind of MP4, otherwise my PSP wouldn’t read it. I loved the mess of wires and I loved working my way through them. Every single part of growing up with technology had a sense of awe to it; A sense of discovery.

I fell in love with computers, I fell in love with the screen, I fell in love with the iPod, I fell in love with green circuit boards, and I fell in love with the promise of a future that would be twice as fast, 3D, HD, non-stop information flow, and always fun to explore. Technological growth meant a messier room doing messy things with cables, mice, keyboards, controllers, joysticks, headsets, microphones, speakers, memory cards, SD cards, hard disks, and all the stuff they interfaced with. I fell in love with anything electronic and it has been my true inner passion for over 15 years now. I love this stuff.

I never thought what it might mean when technology would eventually get so good that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it. When I was growing up, Facebook was something that I controlled. It was mine. I was the one that would put immense effort into perfecting every aspect of my wall. I’d pull the photos off my phone with a cable that plugged into a computer and make an album that I could accurately estimate would be seen by only my friends. And I’d need a different cable to load a virus-carrying Eminem song onto my iPod. It felt cozy and small. The internet was truly a way to communicate with the people I already knew and that limitation was safe, despite the speed and convenience of the internet.

Any time I was asked to communicate with people I didn’t know, like in a Call of Duty match, I’d have an alias. The people I was talking to weren’t my friends and we all knew it. There was a clear barrier and we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other once the game ended. I miss that. I miss knowing that the Internet revolved around me and my actions. It wasn’t about the platform. I miss feeling like the Internet didn’t follow me around. I wanted the Internet. The Internet didn’t want me.

Today, it’s not like that. At some point, money and greed got a hold of the big Internet companies and they decided they’d effectively whore us out to advertisers. Our information is being sold to companies that rip us down to our core to figure out the best way to serve us a targeted ad. Taken on its own, it might not seem so bad since the services are free and the ads might actually be useful but this data is ingested into machines that can learn, predict, anticipate, and react to our online actions to a point where they can now truly and near-accurately take advantage of us. The ads are inserted at the best part of a YouTube video. The ads are served so well that they can blend into our feed and we sometimes mistake them for real content. The ads are so pervasive that the very act of being popular on social media is encouraged so that advertisers can use them as well. I can have a friend on social media that is popular enough to tell me to drink Coca Cola. Bro, get a billboard.

There’s no denying that there is economic value in having this kind of behavior be encouraged. Social media is an excellent tool for business owners as it feeds into our very core of wanting to keep up with the Jones’. We all want to believe we’re doing better than each other and this can (and maybe even should) be exploited to force us to do our best. But why does it have to be all over the damn ‘net?

My very existence on the Internet eventually restricted me from doing all the fun stuff I used to be able to do on the Internet. Netflix is the logical endgame for a generation that downloaded their movies for free. Now Netflix will introduce an advertising-supported subscription tier. The Internet was supposed to stop satellite TV and its incessant ads. Now we will not only have Netflix with ads but we will have Netflix with ads that are catered to our personalities, like are you fucking kidding me? We got jacked, bro.

The real concern that I have is related to Artificial Intelligence. These algorithms have gotten really clever really fast. You can give them a normal text sentence and they can create a brand new image out of thin air based on everything they’ve learned about our world so far. It’s insane. You can also feed an algorithm a video of you and a database of someone else’s image and create a video featuring someone else that never even happened. I don’t know what a good logical conclusion of technology like this can be. There’s simply no way that it can be something good for us in the long term. People today are still susceptible to misinformation and the sheer scale of information-bombardment means you really cant trust people to fact-check everything they read. On top of all of that, there was an interview with an ex-CIA agent where he explained how he manipulated the news wire to effectively force a distorted version of facts to make it into the most established newspapers and news stations that we know. What!

Take a moment to just think about an AI being allowed enough time to learn about humans on YouTube. Think of the sheer scale of the content on YouTube. And think about how it can learn everything that YouTube has. Nothing on Earth should be allowed to be that resourceful. Even if humans will be the ones that eventually control it.

If this is the future that technology has in store for me? A meta verse-inhabiting population that can’t think faster than the algorithms that know how to please us? Yeah, no thanks, I don’t want that shit. I want technology to be an extension of me. I don’t want to be an extension of the computer. I don’t want it, man. Simple as that. Look at where we are. It’s so incredible. The computer has succeeded at replacing everything that used to be on our parents’ desks. The phone has succeeded at replacing everything that used to be in our pockets. It’s an incredible human achievement and a testament to our limitless ingenuity. And the tracking and constant surveillance and clearly looming Big Brother future (that’s already kind of here) is a testament to our disgusting, insatiable, and unforgivable greed.

I still sometimes have those moments I had as a kid. When my Mac can seamlessly makes my iPad a second display? That’s the magic I crave. That’s the technology I want. They’re not gonna put a targeted ad on my second screen. At least not yet.

P.S. As a matter of principle, one man shouldn’t be allowed to buy anything on Earth like Twitter ever again.