Looking through my previous post, it feels like significant progress has been made in internetting better. After all, I'm typing this into an indy blogging platform, in an open source browser, using linux on a refurbished Thinkpad.
We've come a long way, baby.
But there are some services/habits that I just can't seem to quit and I'm still trying to work out whether this is an all-or-nothing type project, or whether I can have a bit of leeway here and there.
While Meta is obviously high on any conscientious objector's list of tech companies to eschew, I knew that abandoning WhatsApp would be tricky. Honestly I haven't really tried to convince anyone I know to switch to Signal, where I have exactly one active conversation going right now. Maybe there'll be a heinous data breach or Meta will start shoveling ads into group chats, or maybe I'll accept my destiny as a hermit, but until then...
Then there's maps.
And then there's google maps.
At one point a few months ago I had four different mapping apps on my phone, but then I went to Cairo. Trying to find a restaurant in Cairo is very hard, even with a local guide and the best mapping software in the world. And as far as I can tell from wondering around Zamalek looking for a doorway to a rooftop breakfast spot, that software is Google Maps.
In some ways, Arsenal is to Google Wallet what Cairo is to Google Maps. The Champions of England 2025/6 only allow digital ticketing supported by Apple Pay or Google Wallet. So, for my occasional visits to the Emirates I have an old android phone attached to my google account which is used for this one purpose. Once every few weeks it gets charged and a ticket is loaded for the match, then back into the drawer it goes until the next time.
This next one, I am not proud of. I spent a year writing an account of a near three decade relationship with Amazon, a detailed interrogation of a revealing and convoluted purchase history and an examination of the impact that Amazon has had on British consumerism and our high streets.
Book and movie rights are still available.
The book was to have ended with the shuttering of my Amazon account. Proper closure. But two years on from having my proposal rejected by every editor in London, my Amazon Prime account is still very active. Over the last few weeks I've bought several books, a soda maker, pet food, a bluetooth speaker, 'flavorizer bars' for a Weber grill, as well as watching several movies on Amazon Prime video and downloading an audiobook on Audible, an Amazon company.
This one I can only put down to weakness. If someone ever buys the rights to my book, maybe I can find the strength to end this relationship for once and all.
Lastly, there is a lovely irony in the fact that my attempts to renounce big tech and make more conscious digital choices have made using devices a whole lot more complicated. How is someone who has used either a macbook or a chromebook meant to choose between the hundreds of refurbed thinkpads out there? How's a complete linux virgin meant to choose between linux distros and desktop environments, or even understand what the difference between a distro and a desktop environment actually is?
I'll tell you how. Gemini and ChatGPT and LLMs is how.
In the last month I've used AI to help me compare laptops, help me compare linux versions, help me troubleshoot issues with fingerprint readers, video codecs, browser idiosyncracies and really, I don't know how I'd have managed without it. Yes, there are forums and communities where you can ask questions and get answers and yes, I've spent some time on the subreddits. But when it's 12.30 in the morning and you've mucked up partitioning and your computer won't boot up, and you just want to cry and then go to bed, being an AI refusenik is not a viable option.
The only thing that I can say in mitigation is that for the last few weeks Ive been using Lumo AI (made by privacy focussed Proton) which keeps my chats confidential and doesn't use them to train an AI model.
It's not much, but it's something.