The Trouble with Technology

Larus Park outside of Richmond, VA

Here I am launching a new webpage to house my recent creative endeavors. I’ve had blogs along the way over the years, but a whole website isn’t something I’ve designed for myself in almost twenty years. My god, I’m old.

In actuality, the website is a reaction to a specific withdrawal from social media. I’ve been very silent on apps and social media for a few months at this point. It had been coming for a while due to how social media functions lately (if you haven’t watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, you definitely should). However, the main cause happened in May when my hometown of Buffalo bore the brunt of an act of domestic terrorism and hate. Some white supremacist drove from three hours away to murder Black people at the only major grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. My city has been torn apart trying to heal ever since. I’m grieving, frustrated, and dejected, and I’m a white dude. I clearly can’t imagine what my Black neighbors are experiencing and feeling. I’ve been trying to process what happened for months now.

The reason I draw an equivalency between what happened in Buffalo and social media is because the killer was radicalized online and broadcasted the killings on Twitch. As a society, we’ve seen a catastrophic shift in social media over the last decade. What started off as a fun way to connect with friends and family has somehow turned into a black hole that feeds off of our attention and fear. It’s now so much easier for some of our culture’s worst tendencies to fester, metastasize, and kill. It’s a tragedy that’s extremely frustrating, and I don’t think anyone has any idea how to make it better.

Meanwhile, I’m sick of the pressure social media and our culture put on us to comment on literally everything. It’s exhausting being constantly barraged with quick, hot takes on every single issue, which I am absolutely guilty of doing myself. These days, I’m trying to appreciate nuance more, and I’m trying to do things that allow me to explore nuance more readily (hence this blog). Social media is almost incapable of nuance. By design, it’s supposed to be quick and ephemeral. You’re not supposed to engage with something for too long as that decreases potential ad exposure and revenue. Maybe it’s just as simple as late-stage capitalism corrupts everything it touches.

Avoiding the Binary

It’s easy to point the finger at social media, especially these days. However, the West has a pretty fraught relationship with technology in general. I’d argue that — in many ways — a main feature of the West’s story is incredible advancements in technology without the requisite humility to keep said tech’s risks and dangers properly in check. There’s a reason Zeus doomed Prometheus to have his liver pecked out by vultures for eternity just for giving us fire. Look what we’ve done with technology ever since.

However, as mentioned above, I’m trying to live with nuance more. In recognition of this, it’s important to point out that technology obviously isn’t completely bad. In true Ed fashion, a park helped me come up with a good way to think some of this through: is technology bringing us outcomes that we want? PS: thank you, Larus Park outside of Richmond!

For example, I wouldn’t be able to be a digital nomad if it weren’t for Zoom, Maps apps, and other technologies. I have a very complicated relationship with my phone — like I’m sure most people do — but I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing without it. Or at the very least, doing this would be exponentially more difficult. This is a good outcome for me, so I will continue to engage with these forms of technology.

Social media — and ugh, gay dating apps — add mostly frustration to my life these days. I’ll still check in on social media to see fun updates from family and friends, but I’ve scaled my use way back. Curation with social media is obviously critical, and I used to be excellent with that on Instagram, but it’s turned into a dumpster fire over the last couple of years. This seems to be the fate of every social media app, and it’s why I’m hesitant to sign up for any new ones. They start off fun, but they all seem destined to turn into a total shit show in the end.

Despite my lambasting of social media above, I do recognize it’s not all bad. Important organizing has happened because of it, and it can be a great way to learn, meet people, and share. It also provides people with a voice where they may not have had one before.

At this point, I think it’s mostly about leaning into and appreciating the forms of technology that do bring us outcomes we prefer. Again, hence the webpage. My goal with this is to engage with and showcase my creativity more. It’s been a really cool experience to revisit my photography and writings since the start of the pandemic. It’s allowed me to see that there really has been a pretty dramatic shift for me in terms of thought processes and perspectives. I made sure to bring that into the design of the website and the concept behind it where possible. Interestingly, this perspective shift was only possible because of the written word and books, but that’s a whole other technology rabbit hole to go down.

I also need to acknowledge that my withdrawal from social media to instead host my creativity on a website is a pretty lucky and privileged thing to do, especially since it cost me $200 to just host some pretty pictures and writing. Not everyone can do that in terms of cost or time commitment. This was a fuck-ton of work and required a lot of time over the last month. Thankfully, it’s damned pretty.

But if you’re reading this, and you’re working on some creative projects of your own, I’d love to see them! Even if they’re on social media (nuance and whatnot).