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> No one is forced to adopt technology they don't like.

Except the opposite is true, and this fact is becoming increasingly pronounced. Technology doesn't exist in the vacuum - it costs money, resources and labor to manufacture and support artifacts like cars or CD players or CDs themselves. Almost everyone on the production side is trying to aim for where everyone else - producers and consumers - will be, while maybe steering it a little. As a result, you have a moving island of "what's current" speeding on the vast ocean called "you're on your own, and shit out of luck".

> Technology doesn't exist in the vacuum - it costs money, resources and labor to manufacture and support artifacts like cars or CD players or CDs themselves

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy vinyles or CDs, but enough people like them, so they aren't on their own: the market provides.

Everything has costs. My refusal to carry a cellphone has opportunity costs for me, but also opportunities like maybe a longer attention span?

> As a result, you have a moving island of "what's current" speeding on the vast ocean called "you're on your own, and shit out of luck".

You have the freedom to use any technology, and go to any technological island.

You don't have the freedom to force others to cater to your tastes, or to imprison them on your island if they prefer to be somewhere else.

I like sixels, but I know it's a niche preference so I don't expect other people will provide me the technology I want. Instead, I create it for my own use, but I also think it's genuinely nice tech that can grow and strive if it gains enough momentum.

If it's as good as I think it is, others will join me on this island and it will grow.

If not, then I'm wasting time and effort, and maybe it's a good thing that I'm on my own and sh*t out of luck, because eventually it'll make me stop.

What you see as negatives, I see as positives, a way to coordinate the large number of individual preferences in society: everyone can vote with their time, effort and money.

> Everything has costs. My refusal to carry a cellphone has opportunity costs for me, but also opportunities like maybe a longer attention span?

That one would be a tough for a lot of people nowadays in the US because it could be a safety issue.

In the first half of the '90s there was a lot of infrastructure to support people who did not have mobile phones, such as plentiful pay phones in public places and emergency call boxes along highways.

Now only a few states still have emergency call boxes on the highways, and pay phones have dwindled from a high of 2.6 million in 1995 to under 100k.

> > Everything has costs (...)

> That one would be a tough for a lot of people nowadays in the US because it could be a safety issue.

Everything has costs, including safety.

> Now only a few states still have emergency call boxes on the highways

If my car stops on the highway and I stand next to it waving my arms, I think someone will eventually come or at least call for help.

Have you spent much time between cities in the southwest in summer?

I have: there are not many people between Nevada and Utah.

"Technology" isn't in the processes or inventions, it's in the societal dependencies that enable their deployment and maintenance. Some of these come "bottom-up," others "top-down".

If you step into a public library you are likely to have access to a large amount of music. It does not matter that much whether the medium of that music is CD or vinyl - the primary technology is the library, the medium is just facilitative, enabling more of it to be archived and made available.

Cities are known as the oldest "technology of civilization" because they operate in this context of providing something that you could not simply choose to have or not have - it has to coexist across a broad number of people. You can buy a different vehicle to drive on the road, but the road and the other people on it are part of the city, and the city is a package deal: you may be able to move to a different city, but you don't get to choose every detail.

>Personally, I think technological progress offers us more optionality: you can now use CDs like in the 1990s but you can also stream. You can use terminals but you can also use GUIs.

>No one is forced to adopt technology they don't like.

And what if I prefer to keep using my old 2g Nokia brick or if I want to get crt monitors or plasma TVs? And if lynx is still my browser of choice, I'm probably going to have a hard time applying for jobs or renting an apartment.

No one is pressing laserdiscs anymore, and no one is building players. The discs themselves are slowly rotting away and in not too many years from now, none will exist.

I could list any number of obsolete technologies that will simply cease to exist in the not too distant future, and just as many that are already totally extinct. Some technologies just no longer serve a purpose and are lost to time once replaced.

> No one is forced to adopt technology they don't like.

No.

* None of the privately-owned car parks I know of take cash.

* The UK government is moving to compulsory electronic filing for small businesses.

* The managing agent used by my landlord has decided that paper contracts are no longer acceptable.

I can walk everywhere. I can close my business. I can live under a hedge. But realistically, I am forced to use technology which was not designed with my interests in mind.

Smartphones are much less optional now too. To log in to government webapps I need to use a mobile app (https://www.mygovid.gov.au/) which is (naturally) only available via App Store/Play Store, which implies I need an Apple or Android and have an account open and in good standing with either Apple or Google respectively. Then there's MFA - every week on this site you'll read how using anything less than app-based MFA is reckless.

Yeah, AU resident here and my phone (the cheapest possible thing I could buy at the time) is "too old" (less than 5 years!) to run the mygovid app (it barely ran the Covid login one), and I do really feel the squeeze from many directions to upgrade my phone.

I'm also rural, and I feel like this push is being largely driven by people who can regularly afford new phones and upgrade to the latest thing, and who live in cities with excellent reception.

A major part of this in computing is security standards - old browsers and phones don't have encryption / controls that meet modern standards, plus manufacturers stop supporting the OS or providing patches.

The people operating mygovid & other identity apps would like the widest device support possible but to some extent their hands are tied by compliance requirements and what their security auditors tell them.

I live in the city with excellent reception and it takes me less than a day to make enough money to afford the latest flagship phone, yet I hate being forced to upgrade my phone.

I like my current S10+ which is 3.5 years old, and the fact that it's no longer on the latest Android version is completely ridiculous.

I don't even know what I can upgrade to if I want to keep using my microSD card and my wired headset.

In addition, pretty much any new car you buy these days will spy on you by default. Along with any other Internet-connected services you use either directly or unintentionally by proxy.

(...and before someone argues, "you could just buy an old, non-spying car", you'll only be able to do that for so long. And pretty much never with a new vehicle.)