 Recently, I discovered a truth about myself that I haven't wanted to admit before, but today I want to admit it to you guys on camera. I hate technology. You know, I've come to the point now where I realize that the more I know about technology, the more I learn about technology, the more I hate it and the more I avoid it. And as one of those things, all these smart devices that we have around us, we all know that these are made by corporations. This proprietary software running on this proprietary hardware and you know they're spying on everything you do through all these smart devices that we have in our homes and in our cars, all our phones and tablets and smart TVs and smart refrigerators, the radio in your car and all of these devices, they're wiretapping you. We know that, right? And while I say we know that, we that are more tech savvy know that the general population, many of those people are unaware. But the more you learn about this stuff, the more you want to avoid it. You want it completely out of your life. And that's kind of where I've gotten to at this point in my life. I don't want, I don't want anything other than a standard desktop computer as far as a computing device in my life anymore. And of course, that desktop computer needs to be running strictly free and open source software because at the minute you put proprietary software on it, something like Windows, for example, then once again, you have another device that's potentially spying on you, spying through the webcam and the microphone, of course, it's key logging you and all of this. And it's one of these things I really do think it's kind of ironic. The people that know more about technology are the ones that fear it the most and avoid it the most. It's kind of like Mark Zuckerberg putting a bandaid over the webcam on his laptop because he's afraid that people are spying on him, you know, on some of the websites and programs and things he runs on his laptop because he knows what Facebook does to people. He knows they do that to people, so he's scared of it too. And of course, from my point of view, you know, it all comes down to being open, right? It's all proprietary versus open source because the reason we fear all of this is because most of our devices, proprietary, proprietary hardware is running proprietary software, we can't audit the code, we can't see what that software on those devices are actually doing to us. This would all change if we had nothing but open hardware and open software because then we could actually verify, yes, that device, that piece of software, that's spying on me. But right now we still live in a world unfortunately dominated by proprietary software. But even other than proprietary versus free and open source, I mean, many of these devices, I just don't think, whether they're open source or not, are healthy. You know, these smart devices serve no purpose in life. We've been sold all of these smart devices that people are traveling with and having their homes. I mean, they never escape. They're always on camera. They're always on a microphone. People don't realize that everything they do in life is being watched now. And we've been sold a bag of goods. We've been sold all these smart devices because these companies tell us it's going to make our lives easier. And it doesn't. And here's what I've discovered as I realize now, most of this technology actually makes my life worse. It adds frustration to my life because how many of these devices do you guys have in your homes and cars and office and things, and you're constantly fighting with technology. You're constantly fighting crashes, bugs. You're constantly playing with settings on various little technological widgets and things that are around the house. And in many cases, these technological devices that you're fighting with serve absolutely no purpose in life other than some company convinced you to buy hardware, this device that you didn't even need in the first place. Now, oddly enough, I've always been kind of a Luddite. Like I'm against cell phones. I was one of the very last adopters as far as actually buying a cell phone and having a cell phone on me. Well about seven years ago, I refused to actually have a mobile phone. I finally had to buy one because I had some jobs at the time where being in a supervisory role, I was on call 24 7365 and I needed to actually have a phone on me. That's the only reason I ever finally gave in and bought a cell phone. But now doing YouTube full time, I actually don't need a cell phone anymore. I have one. I have a Samsung Galaxy 10. I've already paid for it is completely paid for the device. So I'm not just going to not use that phone. I'm going to keep using that phone for now until it stops working. But once that phone either stops working or I just finally decide, hey, it's time to move on from it. I don't think I'm going to buy a smart phone for my next phone. I'm going to do something. If I have to have a mobile phone for some reason, I think I'm just going to get one of these really cheap like prepaid plan phones because I don't do anything on that phone. The only thing I do on that phone is make phone calls because it's a phone. I don't chat on it. I don't read emails and all of this. I don't do text messages and I dang sure don't play games. So I don't need these devices. And for a long time, I thought I was kind of the only one that felt this way that, you know, I'm fighting technology constantly and it's actually causing more pain in my life than making my life easier. But I see it all the time. I'm watching YouTube, right? You guys probably watch YouTube videos where somebody's giving a conference speech, some kind of presentation. And of course, they always are doing this thing, you know, at a podium and they have a tablet or a laptop. And how many times has that tablet or laptop crashed? You know, sometimes even before they even start the presentation, many times in the middle of the presentation, why the hell do they need a tablet or a laptop basically just to give them notes for their presentation? What the hell ever happened to just a notepad and a pen? I mean, laptops, tablets, they crash all the time. I've never actually had a notepad crash. I've never gotten a blue screen of death from just writing notes down on a piece of paper. But I'm actually shocked that how many people these days, they can't even write. They're not used to writing with a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Many people these days, especially young people, because they're not even learning it anymore in school, they can't write cursive. They can't just do cursive handwriting anymore because even the young kids in school these days, they're learning on iPads and Chromebooks and things like that. And it seems like all of this is coming down to the fact that these days, the world is trying to move even faster and faster always, you know, we've got to up the speed a little bit. We've got to have faster ways to get information, faster ways to communicate with other people. We have to have faster ways of gratification, whether that be through gaming or pornography or whatever people are doing on the internet these days. Look at how fast now that we can buy and sell, you know, trade stocks and bonds and options, cryptocurrencies and things like that. Like literally we've gotten to the point where used to you had to try really hard to completely blow all of your savings outside of being, you know, a major gambling addict or a drug addict, you know, it was hard to blow through all of your savings if you had a pretty good bit of money saved up in a savings account somewhere. But now through the magic of this instant trading that everybody's doing, and you hear these stories all the time, people that go completely broke trading dogecoin or whatever people are trading these days, right? Now you can actually lose everything you have in mere minutes thanks to technology. But I think the people that are behind the technology, building the technology, they don't realize all this speed just trying to be faster and faster and faster. Yes, you can make technology faster and faster. And you know, there's no limit to it. There's a limit to us, though. There's a limit to how powerful and how fast a human can be. We have limits. And many cases, technology has already started to exceed our limits. At this point, I think it's safe to say that we all just need to slow down, you know, just at the house. Turn off all the electronic devices. I say this all the time, you know, about me not having a TV. I only really do a computer here at the office to make these videos. Turn everything off. You know, I spent three months this past summer without a computer at home and without a TV. So, you know, what did I do for three months? Well, it's kind of nice. Turn everything off and then just sit and think. You just think to yourself, just sit in a chair for an hour or two and just just let your thoughts wander wherever they wonder. Many people don't do that. Back in the day, you know, that's all we did. But now it's kind of a lost art. How about, you know, if you got some free time and you want to really, you know, get into your your own mind a little bit, maybe meditate, maybe pray, if you're a spiritual person, meditation and prayer, they're really, really healthy. And these days, people just don't spend that much time doing that anymore. If you want some entertainment, you know, instead of relying on electronics, how about reading a book? Many people don't realize what a fantastic thing reading is. Reading a book is so much more enjoyable, so much more immersive than watching a movie. For those of you that are avid readers, you know what I'm talking about. For many of you that just avoid reading books, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. And you really should explore that avenue. Another great way to slow down is quit gaming through electronic devices. If you want to have fun and play a game, go play a game, right? Go shoot some hoops with a neighbor or a friend. You know, get a few people together and create a little baseball diamond. If you got a little land, you know, some lot that you can play on. But even, you know, inside the house, you can do board games, card games, domino games, but play with an actual person in person. Don't do that over a computer. Again, it's all about personal interactions, because again, many cases, those kinds of games in person with someone else are far more enjoyable than anything you're ever going to do. Playing your massive multiplayer online game, you know, on your console or your computer. And of course, I know I'm going to receive a lot of criticism from this video because every time I talk about, you know, the evils of technology, people criticize me, but I really think the world is too fast. You got to slow down. You got to slow down. And now I'm not one of these people that I'm going to say today. I'm going to go ahead and shut down the computer and the camera and everything. And, you know, I'm going to just move out into the middle of the woods and completely live off the grid. I'm not one of those people. But then again, I'm not as plugged in as most people and that being said, even though I'm not as tied to technology as many of you are, I'm still frustrated by it. So I know many of you guys have got to be absolutely sick and tired of it. And I think that's a good thing if you are sick and tired of it. I think I hope society as a whole eventually gets to the point where they see the flaws, the see the flaws of being so addicted to this technology. And I think that's going to be a good day when that day comes. And I really hope one day mankind realizes it's it's kind of lost itself. Right? It's kind of we've lost our way. And we really have to harken back to a slower and a simpler time. Now, before I go, I want to thank a few special people. I want to thank the producers of the show. Gabe James, Matt Mitchell, Paul, Scott West, Akami Allen, Chuck, Commander, Angry Curt, Diochai, David, Dillon, Gregory, Hico, Lee, Maxim, Michael, Mike, Nitrix, Erion, Alexander, P's, Archon, Fedora, Polytech, Raver, Red Prophet, Steven and Willie, these guys, my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. My little rant about the evils of technology would not have been possible. The show is brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm just sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like these kinds of weird rants about technology and you want to support my work, please subscribe to Distro Tube over on Patreon. There I guess. Peace. Not all technology is bad or mode is great.