Preface

I started writing this post not long after I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 (on week 1 of its release) but have only recently finished it off. The dystopian future that is realised in Night City was both visually immersive and, I thought, grounded in realism. Playing through the game I was fairly immersed in the virtual world but, as I progressed, there were more and more parts that seemed more realistic that I’d have initially thought.

Cyberpunk 2077

I was an early player of Cyberpunk 2077 when it first came out. Yes, I know, buggy, incomplete, yadda yadda, but I really enjoyed it! The story was interesting and the gigs (Cyberpunk’s version of quests or missions) were all different enough that they didn’t feel too repetitive like many other games that attempt a world of this size. In fact, the balance between wanting to progress the main storyline and to finish the latest gigs assigned to me was so good that I never felt bored during the game. Now, this post isn’t a review of Cyberpunk (I don’t think that I play enough games to be able to include a games review section as well!) but rather it prompted me to think about something: my perspective on the future of technology and its privacy implications.

An unhappy realisation

The games cityscape is massive. There are many clearly distinct areas within the city (each with its own look and feel), but you can also venture outside of its boundaries to some of the less populated areas. It was here that I found myself, more than once, looking back at Night City. From many high up places outside the city, under the night skies, you can see the spire of advertisements streaming from the ground up into the sky. This tower of bright, colourful holographic advertisements made the virtual city look more alive, but it struck me that this was less ‘fantasy’ than I’d like to think and it got me thinking about advertising in technology.

For example, I love the idea of these foldable phones that are being developed and are now available, mainly for the idea behind flexible screens. The thought of a roll up eBook reader or newspaper, for having mobile screens with us attached to a backpack, or anything else like this is pretty exciting. However, I can’t imagine (and I doubt that you can either) a world with these sorts of technologies WITHOUT having them as the primary outlet for advertising companies to peddle their wares in front of you 24/7. Which wouldn’t be as bad, if we weren’t already paying for these devices outright.

The Price of Technology

Cutting edge advertising

The more screens that advertisers can get in front of you and the more that companies track your every move, the better (for them). The Surface Duo that came out was really interesting and I loved the concept, style and how the device works as a productivity tool, but there is no way that I will ever buy one. And, quite honestly, thoughts like this make me a little sad. In order to get involved with the latest technology, I feel like we have to resign ourselves (not all the time, but particularly with these bigger data-heavy companies) to having to miss out on the latest phone, gadget, device or whatever, if you want to maintain any semblance of privacy or don’t want to be restricted to one particular ecosystem.

These cutting edge or “flagship” devices are rarely cheap, so you end up paying a premium to get the device early in its adoption phase even though this will often come with the additional risk of bugs. However, despite paying this extra premium, you still get milked for all of your data as well as being bombarded with advertising. Companies get your money for the device, sometimes in subscription fees to, they also take your data for marketing, selling and internal use, and they then get to use it to sell ad space for as well. You end up paying for devices in three different ways, but only one is really made clear from the outset. I find this infuriating. Particularly when this trend has made it increasingly hard to be able to find devices that you can own outright without having to hand over the keys to your information and screen real-estate. “Smart” TV’s are an excellent example of this: costly but ridden with advertisements lightly obscured as ‘recommendations’.

Gadgets and novelty

I was previously someone who stayed up to date with the latest phone, laptop or whatever other tech-based items I was interested in. Constantly reading reviews and opinion pieces about upcoming devices, improvements to mobile screen resolution, new chipsets, etc. gave me the impression that I was in the front lines of the available technology. Looking back I can see that most of the features and improvements that I ‘wanted’ were just novelty improvements. A slight improvement in camera resolution or new features to better detect faces (ignoring the privacy invasions of ‘features’ like this) aren’t things that I generally needed in day-to-day life, but I sought them out anyway.

Also, the more I think about those times, the more I consider the devices to be categorised more as gadgets, rather than things that had any real functional use. As someone who tries to not be influenced by advertising and marketing, I was pretty appalled looking back at just how entrenched I was in the whole improvement cycle/scheme. Most of the devices that I used should have been tools and platforms to improve other parts of my life, rather than be the improvement themselves.

Links to privacy

Resignation and realisation

Over the last few years, whilst reducing my tech gadget purchases, and learning more about the privacy, programming and productivity worlds, I’ve realised that I’m more involved in what I’d (boldly) consider the actual new technologies, rather than the gadgets and devices themselves. By better understanding some of the coding, networking or component makeup’s of these gadgets I feel closer to these technologies generally and more involved in the goings on in the technology world. And that’s avoiding the whole cryptocurrency conversation (for now).

So, despite my resignation of being on the slower loop of technological device updates so that I can wait for free and open source software (FOSS) equivalents to come out for the newer hardware that is being developed, I’ve found myself MORE involved with other kinds of technology instead. And I think that my inner (not-very-well-hidden) nerd is more appeased with this outcome than with a shiny new phone.

In closing

My original notes for this post had a comment: “The more I get excited about where technology is going, the more I worry about its place in our future”. Despite this very negative comment, as I finished writing this, I realised that I don’t feel as negatively towards technology itself. I think my concern at the time was amplified by some of my privacy concerns that kick started a lot of the last years privacy focus, but also frustration at having to pay a lot of money but still essentially just renting out my screen space or giving companies personal information for them to make more money from.

After the changes that I’ve made in this last year and in the things that I’m constantly learning about improving personal privacy, I definitely feel less negative towards the gadgets and devices that prompted this post. I feel slightly more detached from some of that world (keeping up with newest phones for example) and I find myself much more content tinkering with different OS', FOSS applications and, in some cases, developing my own.

Notes

Since starting writing this post I’ve finished reading ‘The Attention Merchant’ by Tim Wu. It was an excellent read and really opened my eyes to the extent to which advertising was intertwined with society and much earlier than I had considered. It’s incredibly concerning reading as well, particularly when coupled with a lot of the privacy and data retention media that I read/watch/listen to.