Everything began 3 weeks ago at time of writing, when I saw a YouTube short of Burn Notice. An old spy series I used to love back in the day. So I decided to watch it again. Went on Netflix, but it wasn't on it. PrimeVideo - same. HBOMax. Showtime. 4 services I pay for monthly for not having the thing I want to watch. To google I went. Netflix does stream Burn Notice, but not in my location. ProtonVPN then. But Netflix do spend more on VPN detection than licensing. So constant interruptions. "You seem to be using VPN or proxy..."
And I realized that I don't control my own technology. It does what someone else wants. I just pay for the dubious privilege to lease it.
I am building this to document my adventures in trying to find balance with new tech, that has apparently, and seemingly inadvertently, taken over our lives so completely, that everything currently revolves around a slab of plastic and glass in our pocket.
This is not to say I am returning back to monke as the meme goes, but to reduce tech back to the tool it used to be, instead of the focus of our lives. To use technology and return that spark I had back when I first saw a computer back in 1994. That magic of knowing that beyond the CRT glow there is a world of infinite possibilities. And those possibilities, before this became my profession, were a source of creativity and excitement. At some point(in the 2010s by my calculations) this, at least for me, went to the background, while career in tech came to the forefront.
And now that the career is there, I lost that spark, that excitement for new technology, to see what comes next. Because for me, since the advent of the smartphone and social media, something got lost in pursuit of more content, more specs, more this and more that. Gone are the days when I cared about the latest tech releases. If I needed a new phone I just went and bought the previous gen flagship from Samsung and that was it. No reading of specs, no reviews. Just a boring, capable piece of grey aluminium and glass. Capable as all hell, mind you, so i can scroll Facebook in glorious 140Hz.
And the decision crystallized that I need to bring that spark back.
This site is going to document the projects that came out of this