Seduction of the Cloud
I use an old school radio for radio, a kitchen timer for quick tasks. I've got an MP3 player and wired earphones for jogs. And I have all my socials on my older phone, an Iphone 6.
Am I mad? Well yes, that's known.
[Intentionality]. go to spotify. Go to onboard MP3s for phone. Everyone's phone is CLOGGED.
Always
You go into the cloud, you get disoriented. In-out in-out slow lag reboot in-out.
It's a tenuous tether. It's distracting. It doesn't help that your bog-standard modern smart phones are not made for human beings. Yeah, I said it.
Maybe I'm old. But when I was not old, we did not stare at a cloud interface for hours. That is simply
Gen X is very good at being chilled out when there's nothing to do.
We had cigarettes in our hands instead.
BBC: 1st thing: share on socials. Then news from socials, about socials. It is default digital commons, arguably a semi-voluntary one. You can decline to participate (as do the very young and old).
Unregistered users.
Memory aids / comfort aids. feeding / praying to the cloud is our work now.
If a time traveler could see us, they would say we are praying.
Diversify your approach to the cloud. If a little voice says 'suck it up kid, it's not hard to use your phone' – sure it is.
Who doesn't have a phone clogged full of crap? Who doesn't get distracted flipping between apps? Who doesn't get confused having the sum total of human knowledge but only allowable at a 9 x 11cm window?
We all found out how hard it was to use phones at home, with our computers, with tons of time. It's less ideal because contemplating the, ah, godhead of the Cloud directly is not an easy task.
Working regularly in the cloud means not only doing your work: it also means committing to learning apps, programs, as an intermediary and requirement for your work. In some respects (depending on the job) it may be 'skimpflation'.
Also, your job is to defy your common sense. 'It's just typing on a computer, how hard can it be.' 'Getting an upgrade / a good keyboard / a big screen is
Working in the cloud is not back breaking manual labor. But it is labor, and a significant part of it is items that we previously identified as 'fun'.
The manual language of touch and swipe would be utterly befuddling to an office worker from 2006. That's 15 years ago, long for us but not far away in historical time. Many people learned touch and swipe, screenshot, copy-and-paste for personal use. For fun.
Work and personal identity has collapsed.