Digital Minimalism as a Software Engineer

2023-10-18

It often seems contradictory to others that I am a digital minimalist, when I spend my entire workday in front of a screen as a Software Engineer. However, digital minimalism, to me, does not mean no screen time, although its other values do often contain this as a sub-goal of reducing it. Digital minimalism is about optimizing your relationship with technology and not falling victim to the Sirens of the seductive pleasures of the modern web.

I do admit, I often find myself being a bit of Luddite and ranting about how social media ruined my generation and gave everyone (what I proudly termed) "TikTok brains". Nonetheless, I do still believe technology is awesome, despite no longer wanting to get and reading the latest news about devices, video games, and consoles as I once did as kid. However, I must give credit to this behavior for drawing me in me to learn to program and study Computer Science in the first place, which I am grateful for.

Being 22 and not having social media (let alone, just TikTok) or an iPhone (which I still find it comical how brainwashed people are having the primal reaction of being visibly repulsed by "green" texts), still gets me weird looks. Practice of the Digital Minimalism philosophy has, undoubtedly, had a strong, positive impact on my life. I still can't comprehend, however, why this is not the standard and normal approach technology, when it is quite obvious (to me at least, maybe not to other?) that current technologies like social media, YouTube, and smart phones (their formers' vehicle) are inhibiting individuals potential and growth in the world. It is hard not to see the resemblance of such technologies to the other vices of choice by the Proles in 1984, and would certainly be included as such if Orwell was writing it today.