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Swimming Against The Tide

The headphone jack on my phone broke yesterday. Ideally it would be repaired. My headphones are an over-the-ear Sony pair that connect with a standard headphone jack. In my car a standard auxiliary cable connects my phone to the car's sound system. Why won't it be repaired? Well my phone is 3 years old: the battery life is crappy now, there's a crack in the screen, and the latest operating system runs sluggishly on it. Time for a new phone. When I look at the new models, there's a conspicuous absence: the headphone jack.

That connector is standard and simple and (until the last several years) ubiquitous. No company has a monopoly on it, though, so Apple killed it (with Android accomplices). AirPods are the future, CarPlay too, and I can afford those and a new phone, so why am I complaining?

When it comes to my car I can afford to have everything performed on it by a mechanic (even a dealership). Nevertheless I have replaced headlights, swapped batteries, changed tires, and replaced a radiator without relying on anyone else. That's only possible because I chose to buy an old car with ease-of-repair as one of a few key selling points. (Audi is my favorite car maker but sometimes I think their goal is to make every bit of maintenance an "engine out" procedure.)

Most of my time on the web is reading, not web apps per se. (One thing I truly thank the smartphone revolution for is turning web apps into genuine apps.) Yet a lot of what I read is on Medium, or worse: news sites. Pop-over ads, interstitial ads, video ads, JavaScript trackers, and even "content" like full-resolution hero images ruin the experience. These web pages that serve articles are every bit as heavyweight as common web apps. What's my alternative here? Geminews and Wikipedia over Gemini (see my Useful Links post earlier) help, but there's so much more that (from a user perspective, not an ad manager's perspective) would benefit from being on Gemini.

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." (Unknown author, often attributed to Thomas Jefferson)

This is the part where I acknowledge that, yes, I sound like the grumpy old man at the end of the 60 Minutes TV show. (And yes, I realize this reference is itself dated af.) Technology marches on. Don't like it? Too bad. As a matter of fact, I'm not knocking progress. The smartphone revolution has put the Internet in everyone's pocket and I love that. Modern cars are so much safer today, while being faster, while being greener, that I question my choice to drive something so old. The growth of the web has made a digital presence an ordinary and expected thing, which makes getting all sorts of content (from art to, uh, what starts with z? zoo webcams) much easier.

Then what am I really saying? I'm asking for the public to not make me into a grumpy old man. Don't make me into a hipster, either. Our world is filled with vicious cycles, tipping points, and feedback loops. If enough people refuse to buy into planned obsolescence, or user-hostile products, they create a market for products without anti-features. That market doesn't have to be all-consuming. Some people want the opposite of what I want, and that's fine. That's just fine as long as there's still a place for me and others who want things to work our way. We don't need everyone to agree, but we do need a critical mass.

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15 August 2020 by Sardonyx

Updated 24 August 2020

File under: culture

File under: technology

File under: grumpy

File under: small internet

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