Reclaiming the Future

Three Essays on Technology, Power, Human Agency and the Work Ahead

For most of our lives, technology has been framed as an inevitable march forward faster, cheaper, more connected, more efficient and in many ways that promise was real. Yet somewhere along the way, the relationship between people and their technological tools changed. Ownership became licensing, convenience came at the cost of surveillance while privacy has all but become a thing of the past. The complex high-tech systems designed to empower us quietly began shaping us instead, in ways we failed to notice until they became impossible to ignore.

This series explores that shift; how we arrived at a world that looks polished and advanced on the surface yet feels increasingly hollow underneath; why so many people sense that something is terribly “off”; and what might be possible if we questioned the assumptions that led us to this point of historical crisis.

This is not about being “pro” or “anti” anything. These essays are not a wholesale rejection of technology or innovation, nor a nostalgic plea to return to an idyllic technological past. They are an attempt to name the problem clearly, understand the underlying forces driving it, and sketch a vision for a future where technology once again belongs to the people who depend on it humane, trustworthy, and grounded in human agency.

My sincere hope is that others, with sharper minds, better ideas, and broader visions, can take what I’ve outlined here and build upon it developing their own paths toward a New Tomorrow.

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Examines how technology has drifted away from the people who use it, shifting from empowering tools into systems that extract data, erode agency, and prioritize scale over human well-being. Through personal experience and cultural observation, it shows how many promises of modern tech convenience, connection, progress came with hidden costs that left users feeling watched, managed, and disconnected. The post argues for a return to technology built around trust, ownership, and human-centered design.

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Explores how modern systems appear polished and efficient while quietly hollowing out autonomy, meaning, and social connection. It traces how market-driven innovation and techno-utopian narratives create frictionless surfaces that mask deeply extractive dynamics beneath. The post points toward escape not through rejection of technology, but through rebuilding smaller, local, and humane alternatives that restore agency and participation.

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Articulates a forward-looking vision for technology that belongs to people again rather than managing them. It identifies the assumptions that must be discarded surveillance, lock-in, and infinite growth and replaces them with principles centered on ownership, transparency, and human-scale systems. The post concludes by outlining what this alternative future could look like in practice, emphasizing that it becomes possible when people deliberately choose to build and support it.

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Part 1: The Post Bullshit World

Part 2: Escaping Our Immaculate Dystopia

Part 3: A New Tomorrow

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