Micro
So what now?
Previously I wrote about Big Tech and how they’ve turned us all into addicts. So how do you detox as a tech addict?
Many people turn to this idea of complete detox and disconnection from tech. A total reset. 30 days no phone. There’s definitely merit to that, and I think a lot of people come away with this feeling like they don’t need as much tech as they previously thought they did. This constant checking of notifications and swiping, these are habits that can be undone but fixing your own addiction isn’t enough.
Eliminating social media from your life is great, getting back to normality, getting back to reality. Yet the truth is, we’re ignoring all those people still addicted to the tech, to the short videos, to the toxicity of posting every intrusive thought. What about those people?
I have spent many years fighting the urge to do something. Feeling like I was not the right person. It wasn’t my fight. That I wasn’t in some way qualified, or that there was some sort of hubris to the idea of a saviour complex. To think we could save everyone from the atrocities of big tech. Yet isn’t that where the new battle ground is? The war of misinformation, the war of addiction, the war of infiltration of the minds of everyone. So what are we supposed to do? Just keep complaining on Reddit or HN while the situation gets worse?
I think we’re supposed to do something about this. Removing an addiction is one step, but creating new healthy habits is an even better one. To those like me who were incredibly overweight, cutting out junk food was only one step. The diet and exercise is what completely changed who I was as a person. A person who’s addicted to drugs and alcohol doesn’t just stop thinking about drugs and alcohol, you have to find a place to focus time and energy. The habits we create, the addictive behaviours, while yes we can blame the creators of those drugs, the booze or the apps, it’s essentially us who are looking for a form of escapism. Escapism comes in many forms, but from my experience so much of it has to do with isolation and a lack of belonging. We, the devs are a lonely bunch of people. The internet and the computer was our form of escape. We stare into these screens looking for another world. Another life. My friend that life is not real. I cannot tell you how many hours I have lost to the screen. And not just programming, but to the endless movies and TV shows that did nothing but waste decades of my life. Somehow outside of that I managed to create something for myself, with the will of God, but I was lost to it for so long. And so many countless hours I searched for help, searched for an answer, searched for a community.
The online communities we have, the social media apps, the massive scale technology companies, they are not the answer, they are a distraction. They are distracting us from the truth. We are here for a purpose. We are here for a very specific reason, and we are doing everything possible not to stare that answer in the face. For so many years I have separated my work identity from my beliefs. I have separated myself from the things I put into the world. I project a tech founder, open source creator persona which is is not who I am. And I have spent a number of years now trying to figure out how to rectify that. My fellow engineers. What is the point of all the software we build? What is the point of it if it doesn’t help us understand our purpose? What is the point of it if it doesn’t help us understand our reason for existence? You are an engineer, you build software, you create something from nothing and bring it to life, and yet do you ever ponder over your own creation? Or your creator? How many of you did I just lose there? I can no longer separate my belief from my actions and neither should you. You see so many of us are ruled by our desires, our desire to create something. We decide we want to build something fun or what we think will make us money or be helpful. But in reality, this is not often driven by an intrinsic belief. It is not driven by a belief of purpose or motivation to come closer to the answers of our existence. I’m sorry but Elon Musk’s pursuit of the stars is not going to give him the ultimate answers of our existence because that message was already clearly given, he just chose to ignore it. The truth is that to help people, to help people break free of tech addiction, we have to bring them closer to our reason for being. We have to eliminate a lot of the external distractions and try to help people focus on what it means to be human again.
Part of that answer is, I’m afraid to tell you, to actually read the message of God in a language and manner that resonates with you and if you’re interested in that then you can see my work on the Reminder - a Quran app and API. But the other part and the one that might resonate with more of you, is to create a platform and place, that truly embodies the ethics and governance of something beneficial to mankind, not looking to profit from us. So what is that? I think the truth is you have to meet people where they are. Meaning people are still looking for an X/Twitter style medium (As can be seen by the many clones i.e Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, etc) and that something like this needs to exist but with a morality and mindset governed by those who are God conscious as opposed to just attempting to drive further engagement. Hear me out. Did Mastodon improve on the status of Twitter? Did we somehow end up better as human beings by its existence? Are we posting more thoughtful content or somehow solving humanities inequality through it? Is Threads doing that? Is Bluesky doing that? We continue to end up in the same predicament. The tech isn’t what matters. It’s the people and governance.
I recently used Base, from coinbase. The website talks a good game but have you viewed the content? It’s yet again magnifying the depravities of society. If we’re going to talk about things, should we not be trying to spread a good word? Should we not be trying to solve real problems in whatever we’re posting? If not then shouldn’t we instead refrain from posting content in the first place? Instead what we’ve got is the further driver of likes and retweets through the incentivisation of money and a leaderboard. The predictability of human beings means the things that get liked the most are clickbait, thoughtfully crafted for engagement, not for the dissemination of knowledge. Feeding the addictive cycle, but we can’t help it. We continue to build iterations of things that worked before, rather than rethinking them from the ground up. What I’m proposing is that we really start again. And build something that begins from a standpoint of moral justice, meaning the content has to be about solving real problems. News isn’t just about things posting things we’re going to rage at or laugh at, or feed our addictions, it’s about the dissemination or knowledge. I want to know what’s happening in Gaza, I need to know. And so do the Israelis, because otherwise they’re being brainwashed into dehumanising a people who are no different than them. I need tools that are not trying to rot my brain like Sora 2 OR BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE. That is a true moral quandry of the depths that we should not even have to discuss. I need LLMs because it actually makes knowledge more easily accessible, but I also need that to be from a source that’s not entirely US based. Because I’m sorry but the world isn’t US centric, we have lives that don’t involve US governance, or US politics or US finance despite how much they might try to make it infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
I just think we need to start again, and we need to do it the right way. And to circle back, I fought this idea for too long, I tried to quit tech, quit social media, step back from everything and yet what I’ve found is that if I don’t fight, why am I here? Why did I get this far, why do I have all these skills, and why can’t I stop myself from caring. We have to do something.
If you made it to the end and you care, then reach out to me at asim@micro.mu and I’ll give you access to a prototype I’m working on.
