As I was walking the whippets early this morning through the park, I stopped to admire the beautiful blossom in the trees and listen to the Canada geese honking on the lake. Nearby a Coot was perched atop a messy nest of sticks and stalks, her green plasticy feet tucked away from view.
The dogs only had two wants. To relieve themselves and to check out the world of sniffs and smells for opportunities. I needed to support them in this as their human, but in my walk I wanted nothing. Neither did the trees, the geese, the Coot. None of the beautiful and amazing world before me, lit by soft early morning spring sunlight wanted anything of me.
I often do my best thinking while walking or running. Movement, exercise and fresh air feeds my mind. As I moved I pondered the answer to this question about the machine.
“What do you want?”
Sometimes you see it, although it’s hidden in pages and pages of legalese “Click here to agree to our terms and conditions” that no one CAN read and understand. Other times it is an assumption that it made about you, that you passively agree to. But when we properly and deliberately begin to think about the question, it can help us to choose wisely and to resist if necessary.
In no particular order…
My Linux laptop (bought second hand) wants to enable me to compute, to process words, edit photographs. It doesn’t want me to pay Linux Mint any money. My work Windows laptop wants to interrupt me with news updates from media, it wants to monitor my app usage for data, it wants me to pay yearly for updates to what should be a relatively simple set of office suites. It wants to ping home all sorts of data and identifiers. My old Macbook, well it also wants to tell Apple a lot of identifyable information about how I use ‘my’ tool and if I decline updates and more agreements, well it will soon stop working.
My Kindle wants to get me to buy more books from Amazon. It wants to know exactly how I read the books I have bought, which book, which page, even which line I am on. It wants to know what I am interested in, what I am thinking, whether this is private to me or not.
My paper copy of Behind the Lens wants nothing, even though it’s author signed the book and could reasonably consider having deserved to know a wee bit more more if he wished.
The book seller I purchased said book from, only wanted me to enjoy browsing his lovely shop, have a nice conversation about why I chose this book and to be paid some money to support his family.
The local Italian restaurant I went to with my wife wanted to earn money by exchanging our cash for some delicious home cooked food. They didn’t want our name, address, credit card number, or for us to complete a survey on a screen giving instant feedback (and beautiful, lovely data)
The slew of big name fast food outlets near our home - they want a low paid worker to quickly assemble some pseudo food with almost no nutrition, give it to a low paid cyclist to deliver to me, whilst digital payment goes through a multinational corporation located continents away, paying minimum tax, as fast as possible so as to just rinse and repeat.
My dog may want food, water and to chase the odd ball or squirrel, but mostly he just wants to hang out with me.
My friends and your friends want to spend quality time with us, face to face, without being recorded so any gaff or embarassement can be monetised and shared on the web for someone else’s attention and profit. They want to spend time with us. That is it.
YouTube wants you to keep watching…anything. What it doesn’t actually want is for you to just watch the thing you chose to watch, without distraction, without adverts or “if you liked this, watch this next” links.
Spotify wants you to… stay on Spotify. It wants to make profit from your subscription, as much as possible. The artists, well they figure a long way down the equation. Which is why it doesn’t want to pay anything to any musician who’s song you listen to for under 30 seconds before skipping or who only has 1000 listens that month. It doesn’t really want you to enjoy an album in the correct order, without adding in other track it’s algorithm thinks you should listen to next.
My film camera wants to measure exposure and allow the light I chose to hit the emulsion and create art. Your Android phone camera wants you to take hundreds of images, all of them recording location, information about the subject, time, date and more. The more images, the more of your lovely data. And it doesn’t want you to delete these images as you can eventually pay for extra storage.
What do I want?
I want my laptop to help me to create.
I want my book to expand my mind, privately.
I want my food to sustain me and give me pleasure.
I want my dog to be happy, my movies to move me and my photographs visible on the wall or in a book.
I want my friends to keep me grounded, laughing and human.
I want my thoughts to be mine, private, changeable and maleable without judgement.
Whatabout you?