Today I was thinking about the microcontroller boards that I have
that I hardly use nowadays. I tried the BBC Micro:Bit, the Tomu,
and finally the Adafruit CircuitExpress. All fun to play with,
but compared to my Raspberry Pi, I basically used them for like
a week each and then promptly forgot about them.
I guess that's how consumerist tech has become to me and others,
and coupled with the fact that it's so cheap, has made become
aware of how ever-present tech is in our lives. I'm glad it has
a purpose, but despite the fact that it's useful, it's also a
burden. It's a burden to me, because it takes up more space,
I can't really sell it or give it away because none of my
friends or family are familier with technology that requi-
res programming to work, and I still feel somewhat attached
to it despite not using it anymore. I probably have some oth-
er tech that I feel the same way about.
I think that tech should never be a burden, but a way of
self-empowerment and community empowerment. If it's not doing
that, I dunno then.
I was going to make post a rant about the right to repair and
how people just throw away perfectly good tech despite the fact
that much tech that is thrown away is able to be re-used or
recycled. But yeah, whenever I hear about someone throwing away
a computer or a phone because it became "slow" or isn't the new
thing I just wanna hide in a hole and never come out of it.
People still find uses Commodore 64's and Amiga's for goodness
sake. Basically what I am saying is that you shouldn't throw
away your tech, but if it's become a burden to you, find a
kid or someone tech-minded to give it to and let them have at
it.
