Its been a whole while since I read a book of the fictional type. But the universe served this one up to me on point.

The Every by Dave Eggers.

It is a dystopian, anti-tech fiction set in the near future.

When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous–and, oddly enough, most beloved–monopoly ever known: the Every.

This seems relevant.
Recently, I purchased a new TV (an LG 65cm OLED).
What I expected was to unbox it, plug it in, hook it up to my Wi-Fi, and start watching my stuff.

But no….
First I had to sign up with an LG account. Then download their app. Then wade through their terms of service which wanted to collect a metric shit tonne of data about my viewing habits, send me newsletters and advertising from partner services they think I might find interesting (ha!), as well as wanting to ‘listen in’ even when the TV is turned off.
Uncheck the fuck out of those boxes.

The whole end-user experience was terrible, and felt more like buying in to some sort of covert surveillance marketing bullshit program than purchasing a TV.

As you might tell, I am pretty sick and tired of the enshittification¹ of technology and the crap that is served up to us as AI right now.

I am hoping that a good old-fashioned paperback (snuggled up in a warm woollen blanket, with a mug of hot chocolate and read by candlelight as a wandering minstrel plays his lute) might bring some much-needed solace.

1. The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by data harvesting and pushing invasive advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits.  ↩︎