Today at work, I found that even my software documentation had political messaging featured front and center. I retreat to my ivory tower.

Now is a time to study, to work, to write... ...to pray.

Yesterday, I didn't post my blog to social media. Today, I don't think I will post my blog to social media either. I think there are lots more useful things to read than my blog for other people—I'll keep on writing this here because I think it is useful for me to do, but I don't feel an urge to push it out into "the public space" as at this time our public spaces are thoroughly advertisement infested with charismatic campaigns I can't hope to compete with.

Civilizations need libraries

Sometimes I'll complain about technology, but at the end of the day, I'm not anti-technology. I'm thankful for many of the nice things we have that make lots of tasks easier. The trick is to make technology work for you, not the other way around. ¹

Disconnect: a heuristic

One easy way to make sure technology is being useful to you (a tool to allow you to do stuff more efficiently) is to disconnect as much of it as you can from places where announcements/advertisements are pushed.

Truely, for most software, we don't need the "latest and greatest" software—stuff written 10 years or more ago can often do the trick. For example you might have applications to do the following,

• Write documents (e.g. Libreoffice Writer, markdown, LaTeX)
• Calculator/number crunching (e.g. spreadsheets, R for statistics)
• Media player (e.g. mpv, VLC)
• pdf reader
• Image editing
• Programing languages and tools; editors, interpreters, etc.

Above, I listed mostly open source or free software things because these can be downloaded and used without forced updates. Getting some mainstream Linux distribution—such as Ubuntu—will give you most of these things readily. For more specialized tasks, you may have to go download stuff.

MacOS does a decent job giving you alot of useful things right out of the box (as well as some extra specialty things, like Garage Band for music making).

Having an adequate pile of software such that your computer/laptop will still be useful to you while offline is an effective heuristic to make sure your technology is yours to command.

Going on the Internet sometimes

With the above things prepared, you can go online and grab a bunch of stuff to enjoy/study/etc. offline.

I don't use Spotify or similar streaming services (though I often play music on YouTube). I think that youtube-dl is a helpful tool for downloading media to (re)play later for as well as for archiving purposes. Many old books and other documents are freely available (e.g. as PDF files through Project Gutenberg).

Without the distractions of notifications everywhere, windows open to social media, etc., you can more easily use your computing time efficiently and get off without spending more time than you think is appropriate. Free up time to tidy up your living space, get exercise, catch up with people that are important to you...

Networks of people and things

Using chat or messenging apps often doesn't require looking at some news feed (where ads and stuff are likely to appear). For instance, there is https://www.messenger.com/ for Facebook messenger. Using a dedicated messenging app (either on a phone or on the dekstop site) may be preferable to using the more "full-featured" Facebook app or Facebook website.

Consider how SMS messages and phone calls typically just... allow people to communicate. Hopefully you don't encounter too much ads/spam in these places.

We can try to keep our communication channels clear of noise—stuff that isn't the conversations we're trying to have.

Similarly, shopping and other online activities can be done purposefully. Keeping an old-fashioned shopping list (whether on some text document on the computer or with pen/paper) and then buying stuff from physical stores or the Internet is an effective way to prevent impulse buying on the Internet. Furthermore, maintaining lists of things you may be interested in buying later is a good way to shield from spending money you don't have to buy things you don't need. By writing down stuff you may want to buy later, you get the satisfaction of documenting something you might not want to forget; but also, you add a layer of protection against impulsiveness.

Summary

Here I outline some techniques anybody can use with mainstream computing platforms, networks, and services for doing work, talking to people and buying stuff that will also help you protect oneself against media manipulation—to which nobody is immune.

By organizing our technology usage with efficiency in mind—and giving ourselves options to work offline—we can save our time and attention from the campaigns of third parties. This way, we can spend our resources on things that we more actively decide are important to us, rather than being responsive/reactionary consumers.