A manifesto about technology, freedom, and why software should stop charging us rent to exist.
It was 1997 – They told us it was bright and shiny,
And it was.
The promised land was within reach, and technology would be our bridge.
Cassidy Barton — 1997
You should have seen it, I absolutely believed it when I stood in Steve Jobs's reality distortion field, if you were there then you absolutely knew it!
We absolutely blew it.
It was going to make us more connected, make less work for everyone, give us OUR time to be with our families and art and life.
We had, in that which was tantamount to humankind's greatest achievement, a path to be free and for us to be us!
So why does software still look like it did in 1997, and why am I still being hassled about whether or not I want to save it in a format suitable for 1997?
Are people still using software from 1997…?
They're using the software from 1997 because they don't have to pay rent just to use it.
And if we're being honest the 2026 stuff doesn't have much in the way of improvements, it doesn't even seem futuristic.
It actually takes more of our time and does less than it did in 1997, unless, of course, you're willing to pay monthly, with limits of course, for the features that used to be included.
Summer 1997
Once again we stand at a precipice, a thin razor edge of an inflection point in history, technology that can free us to be human is definitely here.
We at Digital Disconnections aim to write that software that gives us our time back, to be with our kids, our friends, our loved ones–to create art, to be humans doing the things we've always wished we could.
Most problems are easily solved without the use of AI, but solving the problems took time, took lots of people and planning and money. It was often easier and cheaper to fake it, just putting a new face on old software and making it only kind of solve the problem and only creating new levels of frustration.
AI has created the space to achieve truly customized solutions to our problems that fully solve the task they are designed for and without charging us rent merely to exist.
There is no force, other than the ugliness of ego and greed, that can hold back technology from finally achieving it's ultimate purpose of freeing us to passions we often dream of but rarely achieve.
But sometimes we wish it was because the technology was better, crafted with passions of a better future, and 1997 didn't charge us rent just to use our own stuff.