Me and tecnology

I've always been a pretty tech-y person. I’ve always loved the internet, apps, technological stuff. I was the very first one using social media in my friends circle, the only one having a blog, tinkering with apps on my smartphone, the only one with an ereader, the only one interacting with strangers on the internet, before dating apps were a thing. But now, I feel the complete opposite.

I refused to get a smartwatch when everybody followed the trend and I still don’t own one, I don't have smart devices in my home, my car doesn't have an OS with a built-in sat nav, nor a dashboard touch screen, I never talk with Gemini/Copilot/ChatGPT. It's like mine and my friends "roles" switched. I think the most borderline thing I’ve been doing is searching something on Google and reading the summary given by Gemini, but that’s all my intentional interaction with AI these days (I say intentional because AI is so integrated to everyday life now that I’m surely using it somehow without even acknowledging it, unfortunately).

The other day I was at IKEA trying to find the right light bulb for my lamp and I felt absolutely lost. I just wanted a plain yellow light bulb, I didn't want to be able to change colour with a remote or an app, I didn't want it to be dimmerable, I just wanted a fucking led light bulb doing its job and nothing more. But it looked like I was searching for a unicorn. I had to ask to the shop guy in the end. It felt terrible.

When I visit my best friend, I always struggle to turn lights on/off in her apartment. I know, it sounds absolutely silly but they have a touch screen in every room and therefore, without any buttons, I never know if I managed to tap the right spot for the right light (spoiler alert, I never manage to). Last time I was there, I was so frustrated that I asked my friend how can they use that switch on a daily basis without going crazy and she said "but we don't, we ask Alexa to turn on and off lights".

Literally my face → 😐

And that's it, that's where I am, I refuse to talk to Alexa, to Siri, to Cortana to whatever assistant exists nowadays (is Cortana still a thing? I never hear about it anymore). It doesn't feel natural to me, the last thing I want to do when I wake up is talking with a bot to turn the roller shutters on but also during the day, honestly. I feel more comfortable to grab something in the kitchen, turn the light off and then go sit on the sofa, not the way around: going to the living room and from the sofa talking out loud to command a bot to turn the ligh off.

Initially I thought this just made me feel old. But that's not true, I’m 34 but don't feel old in my parents’ sense, I just feel like I'm no longer built for the world we are living.

Like, for example, I have been rereading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown for the first time since high school and I didn’t even know that the book had been published in 2000 (it arrived only in 2004 here in Italy), this means that Robert Langdon had to rely solely on his own personal knowledge to solve the mysteries and move across Rome to find all the clues because there was no portable internet back then. And it’s amazing! You are in awe with this professor’s brain and also with his female aid, Vittoria Vetra, who works at CERN. They are two scholars with such a study background that makes them two living encyclopedia.

But imagine if Robert Langdon was trying to solve this mystery in 2025, smartphone in hand, running across Rome with Google Maps suggesting him to use an electric scooter for the fastest route and talking to ChatGPT (or an equivalent AI bot) to find the solution and save the world. I would have found this book utterly anticlimatic and boring, to be honest.

Anyway, I typed half of this rant in my car on Google Keep in the IKEA parking lot and the other half on my computer sitting on the sofa in between some chapters of Angels and Demons. It reminded me like the old days of blogging when something was pissing me off and I simply opened my blog’s blank page and started typing. Oh the nostalgia! 🙂