Something interesting seems to be happening. Not something huge. Not a movement, as far as I can tell. There are no conferences about it, probably no consultants writing whitepapers about it, and I haven’t seen anyone invent a clever acronym for it yet. But here and there I am beginning to notice people who are simply saying: enough.
They are leaving social media. Or they stop using AI. Some replace their smartphone with something considerably less smart. Others dramatically reduce the amount of time they spend online. And occasionally someone seems to disappear from the online world almost completely.
I find this interesting. Not because I am planning to follow them. I like technology far too much. I like tinkering with computers, the internet, websites, strange protocols, Linux, AI, small apps, obscure tools and all the other digital stuff I keep writing about here. I also happen to think smartphones are incredibly useful devices, even if we have probably allowed them to occupy a somewhat ridiculous amount of our lives. And AI? I use it. Quite a lot, actually. I am interested in what it can do, where it goes wrong and what it might turn into.
So this isn’t going to be one of those I deleted everything and suddenly heard the birds singing again posts. Still, I admire people who make a different choice.
There is something wonderfully stubborn about it
What makes these decisions particularly interesting is that the people making them are often not in a position where technology is irrelevant to their lives. Quite the opposite actually. Some are developers, consultants, designers and writers. And almost always freelancers. People whose professional lives have been closely connected to the internet for years. Sometimes their online presence isn’t merely something they do after work. It is (or was) part of how they find work.
Deleting a social media account is easy enough when it is mainly where you post holiday photographs and argue about football. It becomes a rather different decision when that same network is where potential customers know you from.
Stopping with AI is also one thing if you rarely use a computer professionally. It is another when you work in software development and seemingly every company on the planet is currently trying to work out how much AI it can squeeze into its products and processes.
Choosing not to participate may therefore have a price.
Or perhaps not. Maybe these people will discover that very little changes. Perhaps customers will continue to find them – via email or by calling them. Maybe their work becomes better because they have fewer distractions. Perhaps being the developer who doesn’t use AI will eventually become an interesting professional position in itself.
But you don’t know that beforehand. And that is exactly why I think it is rather brave.
We are usually very good at adding things
Technology has a peculiar direction. We always add stuff. We get email, and keep email. Then we get instant messaging. Then social media. Then Slack and Teams. Then smartphones so all of those things can follow us into the supermarket. Then smartwatches so we don’t even have to take the smartphone out of our pocket. And now AI is being added to practically everything as well.
What we are much less good at is saying: actually, I don’t want this anymore. Or perhaps even more radically: I know this could be useful, but I still don’t want it. That is an interesting distinction.
You don’t have to believe that smartphones are evil to decide you don’t want one. You don’t have to believe AI will destroy civilisation to decide that you prefer to write code, text or anything else without it. And you don’t have to believe social media is fundamentally broken to decide that you would rather spend your time somewhere else. Technology doesn’t always have to be rejected because it failed. Sometimes you can reject it simply because you don’t like what it does to your life.
The financial part intrigues me
There is another aspect of these stories that I find particularly interesting: how do you make it work financially? That question is probably especially obvious to me because I see quite a few of these choices being made by people who work independently or whose professional reputation is closely tied to their online presence.
If you are employed by a company with a comfortable salary and decide to delete LinkedIn, that is one thing. If you are a freelancer whose next assignment might come from someone who has been reading your posts for three years, it is something else entirely.
The same applies to AI. Imagine being an independent software developer today and deliberately deciding not to use the technology that clients are constantly hearing will make developers dramatically more productive. Maybe you can explain why. Maybe your clients agree. But it is still a bet.
I like the fact that some people are apparently willing to make that bet. Not because I necessarily think they are right. But because they have thought about the role technology plays in their lives and concluded that not using it is an available option. We tend to forget that.