> People are always surprised when they hear me say I hate tech.

Same. But it's not really that I hate tech: I hate that inferior, mediocre, device that the smartphone is. It's a spying device. It's got a minuscule pathetic screen (I rock an ultra-wide monitor at home).

I drive more than most: I was finding my way across Europe before smartphones and I can still find my way without constantly needing a smartphone. My car's navi system (from 2013) does the job totally fine: just a map and GPS receiver and that's it.

I very often don't take my phone with me: when I see people glued on their phone, endlessly doom-scrolling and taking selfies I just pitty them.

But I'm not luddite: I've got a "homelab" which I uses daily (it serves family pictures, movies, files/backups, it hosts VMs, I use it to isolate AI agents etc.).

A smartphone is not "tech": it's a mediocre piece of crap that spies on people. Worse: many have a smartphone but aren't comfortable speaking on the phone.

It'd be a tragedy if it wasn't pathetically funny.

And at home I keep hammering to my kid that smartphone are poison: opium for the unsuspecting masses.

And as she sees me doing just fine without my smartphone, the point is getting across.

Screw smartphones: just screw those mediocre turds.