Being a developer with an aversion to hardware, I often find myself shaking my fist at any new iPhone or laptop or Smart Kettle that comes along. As I mentioned before, this is a key contributor to my own feelings of Imposter Syndrome. In order to help turn this around, allow me to first list all the irrational grumbles that I have with tech.
My problems start at the most basic level: electricity. I simply don’t understand it. From day one, my mental model of electricity went wonky — something I’ve not yet been able to correct. As a result, I’ve always been suspicious of anything that relies on the clever use of electrons. It feels so fallible, like we’re pinning everything on blind luck.
My dream, as an electro-phobe, was always to abstract the actual physical hardware away. I used to picture myself writing code on a cloud, rather than a computer. Then the actual Cloud came along … and, what do you know, it was still based around electricity.
Speaking of hardware, it tends to be important. Yet I can break it. I don’t like to be around important things that I can break. This reason alone is enough to put me off.
Besides, there’s always the chance that our latest piece of kit will break itself. Everyone has a tale of technology-based woe, like that time the printer ran out of ink, 2 minutes before your dissertation was due. Or when the internet dropped out, just as you were paying for that gold-plated Luxury Bubble Foot Spa. These moments really hammer home how reliant we are on technology.
That reliance is scary. It holds so much power. These days our devices even learn our personal traits. We only have to type a single letter, and our browser can take us to the site we want. In my movie-ruined mind, technology is HAL. Or Skynet. Or Otto … from Wall-E, that is, rather than Airplane.
Of course, mistrust of technology is nothing new or original. It probably dates back to the stone age, when husbands might worry about their new hammer running off with their wives.
Back then, though, they only had about 3 bits of technology to worry about. By contrast, the sheer volume of technology these days is overwhelming. You can drown in seas of tech … literally, if you’re wearing the right VR headset. This is doubly true if you work in the industry, and keeping up is vaguely part of your job.
My coping mechanism has been to write everything off as a gimmick. The iPhone. The iPad. Amazon Echo. I’ve rubbished all of these at some point. That’s another thing about tech — it’s constantly proving me wrong.
One final admission: sometimes I find tech boring. I get bored of the dry reference manuals. I get bored of the complicated lingo. I get bored of trying to keep up with it all. Perhaps this is weariness in disguise … but it sure feels like boredom at the time.
So there we have it — my reasons. I’m not sure what common threads there are. Probably fear, and a lack of understanding, and the occasional bout of indifference.
At least now I have an idea of what to change. The next step is figuring out how to do this.
Until then, I’ll continue to sit outside my front porch, shouting at every delivery drone I see. Get off my land!