There's a lot of forces trying to deny that nowadays.
One could say I'm a bit of an introvert. In fact, it's one of the reasons I've got into computers and programming in the first place: (supposedly) you don't have to deal with people much when writing programs and configuring systems. Or so they said.
Teenage me was super-naive, yes, but for some time it really did create the illusion that I have full control over something sensible, and that to achieve my goals I didn't even have to talk to people, negotiate with them, disagree with them, whatever. All I needed was a pile of books, some online documentation and a working C compiler.
I think the reality hit me about two years into my employment, where I've stumbled into a problem that I couldn't solve by myself for about a month, and nothing available online really helped, and so instead of discussing things with senior engineers in the company (which I was quite embarrassed to do at the time), I've just kinda... disappeared. Basically said that I'm leaving the job and parted ways with the company after two weeks.
I've spent about a month doing mostly nothing (if writing silly discord bots counts as nothing), and then walked into a startup with even more difficult problems to solve; was able to solve most of them for some time (about half a year), and then burned out again. This time, however, the psychological reaction was so strong that I didn't want to touch computers ever again and seriously considered becoming a dance teacher. Yes, really. (there's a lot of details I've omitted here, maybe I'll tell them later)
Of course, soon the money has ran out, I've decided to seek employment again, fumbled for a little bit, and stabilised on changing jobs once about every two years. No big burnouts this time, everyone is mostly happy. I've become a married man and a father.
...the only problem is that there were still "burnouts", in the sense that I was getting into situations where I perceived the reality as if there's no other way to resolve them other than to quit the job, rethink everything, and hunt for a new one in a month, after having some well-deserved rest. And it all kinda sucked. And I didn't really understand why, basically until this year.
Through some unexpected circumstances, 2025 arrived and everyone started talking about AI this, AI that, and how it's supposed to democratize shit and whatever, and how everybody is going to be left behind, and how there's no need to hire other people to do anything anymore, and then it took me almost a year to get to a point where I've had a gut-wrenching realization about why it all feels so icky, even if you somehow manage to put ethical considerations aside:
Those dudes haven't talked to a real person in an awfuly long time. And I don't mean like a food delivery person or uber driver. Or even a coworker. It looks like they haven't felt a single meaningful reciprocal connection to a real human for so long that they seem to have forgotten what it feels like.
And they want to impose the same shit on the rest of us. They want to replace the messy experience of waffling about nonsense and laughing and arguing and disagreeing and getting invaluable knowledge from other humans and having that immense feeling of wanting to be there with that person in the moment, with an always-oh-so-pleasuring text generator, and they call it a revolution. It just leaves me scratching my head. Like, what the fuck are you on about, dude. It's simply pathetic.
What it took me 10 (or maybe 20?) years to realize is that I simply cannot avoid being with other people. Nor should I want to. Those other people, by being present here, bring so much unexpected variety and meaning in my life, I simply cannot imagine what it would look like otherwise.
Even if you look at it from the work-ethic angle, I would simply achieve much less if it weren't for those people near me. And it only really counts when it's people who I consider to be close friends or important figures in my life, not my boss or a coworker who I exchange a couple of messages with over a week (even if they are memes).
Now, this all gets kinda rambly and incoherent at this point, and I'm really sorry about that. Maybe someday in the future I'll write a much better version of this post.
The point that I'm trying to make is, technology for its own sake without considerations about its impacts on human connectedness is a mistake. As we say in our language, if you see people advocating for that, drive them out with pissed-through rags and laugh at them.
Another point is, if you feel like you are struggling with your project, don't be afraid to reach out to another human. A wonderful thing is (almost) guaranteed to happen. It certainly happens more often than I could've imagined.
And third, if you feel like you have no one to talk to about
your cool (idea for a) project and it starts to rot out of
neglect, reach out to me
on Mastodon
and I can try to be your personal motivational dummy. :)
For
me, connecting to just one person is much easier that connecting
to an abstract wide audience of social media for example. Maybe
the same is true for you.
Whatever the case, thanks for reading this rant, and I'll see you all soon.