i work in tech and i'm anti-tech

Sigh.

I have two higher education degrees in tech and I'm also one year away from receiving my doctorate in the same field...and I am anti-tech.

The moment my fingers tippy tapped out that HTML code in class in tenth grade, I knew that mama was going to be a software engineer. (Well that and a writer, and a dancer, and a professional soccer player, and a chef, and a...you get the gist.) So when I got to undergrad, I walked right onto campus with my freshman lanyard and just knew that I was going to be the next Steve Jobs. My major was booked honey, call up the registrar and let her know that I, Analog Gurl, will be declaring Computer Science. It was practical, it paid well, and I had a knack for it -- the end!

That desire however quickly shifted when I realized that a large part of Computer Science involved physics and math classes that I was not willing to waste my precious youth pretending to care about, and like the lazy girl I am, I quickly pivoted to an adjacent tech degree, Information Science, which would allow me to still code but also learn about this hidden third thing I'd never hear about -- the human side of design. This decision is one of the first things in college that changed my life. It was here that I was first introduced to the workings of how social technologies, tech companies, and product design, worked and where I found that this space was first and foremost a profit and pleasure industry.

I was shocked that behind the cool gadgets and the social media theatrics, were a conglomeration of engineers far removed from the people and the society for whom they were designing their technologies. The software engineers and the bros in the think tanks were not necessarily interested in the impact of their work on the lives of everyday people and the overwhelming diversity of people who would be using their devices. They were interested in creating technology for the sake of newness, for the sake of fixing and optimizing life into digital form.

This felt wrong to me. So I decided that my space within this space would be to join the smaller group of voices of reason. If the powers that be refused to acknowledge the hegemony in their design choices, well, I would show them the way, or at least theorize for the plot.

But the problem with being a critical technology researcher is that the critique is often lost under the deluge of tech bros hammering on ad infinitum about machine learning, and optimizing workflows, and chatbots, and LLM's. Speaking up in this space is like being a background dancer for Sabrina Carpenter, as a dancer I respect your work, but the average Jess is not paying attention to you popping and locking my friend.

I remember having a conversation with my mentor's mentor at a conference last year. Begrudgingly, like the introvert I am, I explained to him the research that we were working on, and he nodded and hummed along like a diligent listener. I'm giving him this long winded explanation about this tech that I focus on in my work, and the impact on these groups, and that and the third, I'm really giving him some of my best oratory work, and finally, I release him from the listening holding cell. And he takes a breath, leans a little to the side, and responds with a cheeky smile and a small chuckle, "Who cares?"

I don't really know why I stuck around with this field, hoping to be the voice of reason about this thing that I love, even when a part of me has always known that the gripes I had with it would never come to pass. Because why would it? It's always been about profit and pleasure.

Still I wasn't immune to its trappings.

At the same time that I was studying it, I was finding small success on Youtube and Instagram, where hair videos, fashion, and grainy selfies were my claim to micro fame. The analytics were my friends, I would check them early and often, analyzing the market like a stock broker checking the best times to post and the hashtags that seemed to get the most response. I was building my own empire, using my personality and my looks to get me...well I didn't really know what I was trying to get, financial security, autonomy, fame? I also knew that I wanted to get creative freedom and that by building a following online I would be able to get access to doors in the creative industry that I would never get by way of being a girl without any connections. For all intents and purposes I was on my way and after four years I was finally starting to get sponsorship requests, consistent likes, consistent new followers.

Then the pandemic happened and I temporarily deactivated my Instagram. I bought a guitar on the last day of lockdown and starting learning how to play it. I started taking vocal lessons. I started producing my own music. I cut off all my hair. I deleted my Twitter. I quit my full time job. I had an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, an existential crisis, an existential crisis. I moved across the country. I started my Phd. I starting growing out my hair again. I started therapy. I reactivated my Instagram. I spent a summer in Europe. I posted on Youtube. I went to Havana. I created a spam Twitter account. I found success as a researcher. I became disillusioned with research. I had a spiritual awakening. I found feminism. I made music. I had an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis. I found Reddit. I found Lipstick Alley. I scrolled but never commented. I didn't make music. I had an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis. Elon Musk bought Twitter. I deleted Twitter. I read Digital Minimalism. I logged off of Reddit. I logged off of Lipstick Alley. I sold my television. I played guitar in my living room. Every day in July as the sun set, I listened to my downstairs neighbor play the sitar. I found my first love again, reading. I went on walks. I found success as a researcher. I became disillusioned with research. I started watching shows on my laptop. I had an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis, and an existential crisis.

I posted on Instagram again for the first time in three years and immediately logged off. I felt disgusted with myself, why had I gone on, why did it feel like I was selling my soul? Even if I knew that my desire to become a self-sustaining artist required that I create a persona, even if I now understood that I had to sell some part of myself to get the life that I wanted? Why did I feel this way about posting pictures on a screen, why was I waiting to record Youtube videos until I felt that I looked my "best"? Why did it have to be that way and why did nobody in my discipline see our space the same way I did? Do.

I bought a flip phone. And it has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. But I cannot say that I am free of the shackles of technology. I wish to be free, on a personal level. I only wish to interface with it when I need to for my research and for my writing and my music. But I still find myself searching on Google, looking for pages to swipe down, looking for content or celebrities to appease something within me that has been broken by these systems. I bought a flip phone and I still spend hours on my laptop, so I find it hard not to feel poorly about my progress even if Twitter and forums are no longer my drug of choice. I search the internet for laptops for digital minimalists and although I already know the response to the question, I still find myself disappointed that they do not exist. Sometimes I dream that I invent one. But mostly I feel sick. I feel victory for detaching myself from my iPhone, only using it for maps and exercise apps, but also feel anxious to sell more tech pieces (maybe my iPad), offload more, get offline more. But it gets harder, the deeper I go, the more I feel detached from my loves' states away from me, from my generation, from popular culture. How far am I willing to go to free myself from the jaws of social technology, from convenience? I want to stop watching television, but I love television, I even write television. How do I reconcile these two parts of myself?

I hate the idea of taking the long way around, even if that has been the only pathway life has taken me. I don't yet have the answer to these conundrums and I guess that's what beautiful about life. It's not linear. I'm trying to give myself grace as I figure out how to navigate being anti-tech in a tech work field. I need to figure out how to give myself grace as I figure out being authentic on unauthentic platforms.

And the best part about writing on a SubStack that nobody who knows me knows about, and that has no followers is that I have the space and the comfort of yelling into the void. That's gnarly.