I'm not against technology - in fact I was a tech nerd before I was a teenager - but here's a story of how I became increasingly anti-tech in the last 15 years. This isn't about AI. This transformation happened long before ChatGPT.

We went from being craftsmen using technology as tools, understanding cause and effect, building mastery through practice, to being petitioners obeying technology like an unpredictable master. We let digital systems cross our boundaries daily, accept being unwilling test subjects in tech experiments, and rarely question how we surrendered our agency.

In this episode, we explore the "opacity threshold": the invisible line where your relationship with technology fundamentally changes. Before we crossed the line, we were the agents: reliable input-output relationships could be established. But now, we became supplicants - and exchanged control for mysterious behaviors to work around.

What happens to your relationship with a tool, if no mastery is possible?

Chapters:

0:00 Technology's Fundamental Shift 2:23 The Promise of Accessibility 5:27 Reliability vs. Convenience 8:36 The Opacity Threshold 10:18 The Black Box Dilemma 12:19 Technological Stockholm Syndrome 13:29 Questioning Our Choices 17:26 Tools vs. Experiments 20:33 Rethinking Technology Values 22:36 Conscious Relationships with Technology

Produced without AI