Cutting the cord to the cloud

In a bout of retail therapy, tired of algorithms running my media consumption and fed up with being connected and reachable all the time, I decided to buy myself an mp3 player.

It's part of my new ✨offline✨ aesthetic, where I try to write on a dedicated word processor, read physical books, and otherwise take notes on paper. (I've been obsessed with fountain pens for over a decade now, so it's as good of an excuse as any to clean my pens and fill them with novelty inks.) I've written about word processors before as a machine for distraction- and AI-free writing, which has been pretty fun to use, and I've enjoyed the entirely stripped-back nature of writing in these formats. I don't want to play into the narratives about fighting technology addiction and restricting screen time, but there is a certain delight to these single-use devices that makes instant gratification a little more difficult. I also find that I savor the experience of making, reading, and listening to stuff a little more.

Filling up the mp3 player is one of my favorite pastimes lately because of the wizardry that is the Internet Archive. The Boston Public Library, for example, has digitized a ton of their vinyl collection, making browsing for music akin to being in a really good secondhand record store. The main difference is that you can actually listen to stuff before purchasing it (or, in this case, downloading free public domain media). It's really like magic. I haven't gotten as much into Librivox—the public domain audiobooks read by volunteers—but there's a bunch of BBC radio productions of Shakespeare (e.g., Macbeth) and Roald Dahl's lesser known works of adult fiction.¹ For the classical music enthusiasts, the amount of Yehudi Menuhin and Maria Callas records that are available is actually amazing. I've discovered all sorts of random gems, like Teresa Teng's only album in English, and I've barely scratched the surface of what new music I'll get to taste.

I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready (and honestly, able) to de-Google my life,² but I'm just exhausted by the constant enshittification of almost every aspect of modern life. I am pre-emptively mourning the day my car from the early 2000s dies, as the idea of having to pay a subscription to operate a machine I bought for tens of thousands of dollars is absolutely unimaginable to me.³ Anyways, enshittification just feels so ubiquitous, so inevitable these days; I'm equal parts shocked and sad that being able to actually control your media is a revelation these days. As annoyed as I used to be since it took up so much space, I'm so grateful that my partner bought a shit ton of Blu-Rays the day that the local Blockbuster closed. Please, just let me watch an uncensored version of Tom and Jerry in peace!

There are so many other cases of companies making edits remotely with streamed content, as with Agatha Christie novels. I'm not saying that these racial stereotypes are okay, but that changing the words since we're now just buying "licenses" to content is not really a meaningful way to address discrimination. It's just sanitizing history. Seriously, God help future historians who have to work with endlessly manipulated sources. For some, this all sounds tenuously connected and needlessly alarmist; I guess what I'm trying to say is that actually being able to control your media and cutting the cord to the cloud is the only way of really escaping the clutches of all these things—censorship, erasure, surveillance, and the constant (!) subscriptions. There are all sorts of problems with nostalgia, but seriously, remember when you could just buy a piece of software?

I know I've talked a lot about ownership in the last couple paragraphs, but I haven't even gotten to the best part, in my opinion—libraries. (Okay, the Internet Archive is nothing if not the internet's Library of Alexandria.) Libraries use collective ownership as a way to help people access all sorts of things so that they don't have to buy things in order to enjoy them. Outside of actual books, I have borrowed an Instant Pot, pasta roller, and assorted tools I only need to use once. I have restrained myself since I think children should get dibs, but childhood me would have done anything to borrow an American Girl doll, which is also available at my local library. (I never had one, but I read all of the books—also at the library, no less!)

Anyways, all this to say: I want to (mostly) cut the cord to streaming and subscription services for all of my digital needs. I'll watch my Blu-Rays, listen to my mp3 player, savor my physical books. I can rail about censorship and enshittification all I want, but if nothing else, I want the delight that comes from browsing CDs and vinyls at the library. Maybe this is preachy and sanctimonious; mostly, I'm just so tired of paying every goddamned month for shitty service.

I'll be at the library if you need me.