Age of Humanity

We're firmly in the midst of the Age of Technology. Silicon-based compute has transformed human existence from one of human connections to one of technological interventions at every conceivable layer. As an "elder" millennial in the final year of his thirties, I've lived this transformation first-hand: going online in the early 90s, building websites over Telnet, banging out IRC messages via T9 keyboards and EDGE data connectivity, ordering pizza via Everquest 2, inviting "smart" lightbulbs into the apartment, paying rent via online ACH instead of physical check, applying for career opportunities almost exclusively online, and all the while making friends throughout the world before social media became a thing.

I've also been finding myself withdrawing from technology despite being a technologist. I pay rent by physical check again, to avoid having my data hoovered up by surveillance capital while charging me a "convenience fee" for online payments. I've been ripping out "smart" gadgets in favor of local solutions like Home Assistant, and blocking those I'm forced to carry (like the ecobees from the landlord) from accessing the internet. While I'm excited for an EV or a new vehicle, I soldier on in my 2010 Honda because it doesn't phone home with excessive telemetry that the manufacturer then sells onward for more profit. I'm shifting from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple services to Proton, PikaPods, or locally-hosted alternatives. I run a Pi-Hole and recursive DNS at home to limit the data my ISP and other service providers can scrape about my web habits, and shifted away from cloud-centric networking back to on-prem kit. I even run AI at home when I want to poke at it, rather than surrender intimate data to AI companies seeking to juice their models and diversify their revenue.

This attitude persists in my work, though not by choice. I spend a disproportionate amount of my professional time trying to get my employer off Microsoft because I'm the one building these products, and the one having to invest a significant amount of time wrangling their software and operating systems into working in the air gapped, offline environments our products operate within. I've published presentations on private cloud providers, financial models about the cost inefficiencies of public cloud operations for stable workloads, and guidance on how to effectively rip out technologies that fail to deliver on growth or savings rather than perpetuate a zombie service further. I started my career a technological evangelist; I find myself at present to be more of a technological pragmatist.

As I end what might be one of the worst years since the 2008 Financial Crisis in terms of employment prospects and quality of life, I can't help but think that we're exiting the "progress" era of the Age of Technology, and find ourselves in the midst of decline. Layoffs and consumer costs rise in spite of record profits, the cost of living far outstrips the cost of things or the wages workers receive, geopolitics is coalescing around toxic technologies like surveillance and generative-AI while fighting the last battles of old empires; I could go on, but we've all beaten that dead horse by now.

And so I look forward to tomorrow, and what challenges or opportunities it may bring. The biggest one - the one we've been quietly fighting for nigh twenty years, now - is the balancing of the scale between technology and humanity. Nobody is doubting the immense benefits technology has brought us as a species, the growth it's created, the novelties and treasures it's rewarded us with. LED lightbulbs are a game changer, as are the ability to poll and address common devices via standard APIs. So too is the commoditization of compute itself, cheap enough for almost any human above the poverty line to have a digital presence under their exclusive control. Enterprises have immense insights into their operations, and almost every human on the planet has access to a computer with the sum total of human knowledge at their fingertips. What do we use this unprecedented power for?

Mass surveillance. Disinformation. Deep fakes. Optimizing profits, exploiting and manipulating markets, funneling ever more resources into ever fewer hands and rejecting the needs of humans for the desires of monsters. We do not even give people control over what they purchase anymore, locking operating systems to app stores, blocking jailbreaking or third-party repairs, selling your attention and privacy and habits not merely to the highest bidder, but to any bidder, even law enforcement and oppressive governments seeking to circumvent the very civil liberties protections they're supposedly bound by.

The Age of Technology is firmly in its decline, causing exponentially more harm than benefit in its deployment and expansion. As a technologist, that depresses me to no end. Seeing the tools and innovations I loved and championed be perverted into weapons, I can't help but wonder if this is how classical artisans felt being asked to make swords or cannons instead of infrastructure and durable goods. Yet I also know that nothing lasts forever, and that history is broadly cyclical, a pendulum constantly swinging back and forth between excess and scarcity, between peace and conflict. As the Age of Technology ends, the subsequent age will be defined by what we collectively choose to prioritize: our humanity, or our technologies.

I see it in global organizing against the toxic and unsustainable status quo, of tenants organizing against landlords, of citizens organizing against corrupt regimes, of workers organizing against employers. The world is splitting along traditional lines of wealth and poverty, but so too are we splitting between those who view humanity is deficient in the face of technology, and those who view technology as a tool to benefit humanity as a whole rather than replace it. AI is the latest catalyst between these two camps, especially as it presently seeks solely to optimize for the benefit of capital through job displacement, data analysis, market manipulation, and human immiseration. Despite humans seeking technology to reduce the need for labor and thus restore more of their time and energy to devote towards community or life itself, capital seeks to use technology to remove the need for humans outright - or at least those they view as "subhuman", i.e. the working classes.

Looking forward to 2026, and I believe we're at the proverbial inflection point for the next generation of society. As much of a technological evangelist as I am, as much as I love the benefits I've reaped from it thus far, I simply cannot stand by and watch as my work and the work of millions of people far smarter than I, is perverted to destroy us all for the sake of a better fiscal quarter for those already with infinite sums of wealth.

I fight for a future humanity supported by good, equitable, accessible technologies and systems. I hope more of you join that fight in your own way in the year ahead. Fighting against mass surveillance, against centralization, against DRM that restricts consumer choice, against AI-enabled pricing schemes or advertising engines, against corporate power and government intrusion.

To fight for a better world of builders, of makers, of creators and artisans. A world of plenty for all, instead of excess for few.

An Age of Humanity.