Send only text, forever

In our previous text, I talked about how I have mostly disengaged from the merest concept of technology, an idea that is both universally correct and revolutionary. (Technology, at present, is revolting.) But I’m also typing this on a computer, and I use a computer for my job, and I’d like to keep doing that, because it’s kind of all I know and I am not ready to retire yet.

Not all technology is bad, of course, and since text is supposed to be a durable canon of wonder, I thought I would talk a little about the technology out there that is good, actually, and riff a little about why.

The goal is to build structures that endure. That is why we’re here. This is, on face, a preposterous claim. People buy new tech very frequently. The lifecycle of software is short. People seldom even work at tech companies for more than a couple of years at a time. (Before Draft, my longest W-2 job was two years.) So things get abandoned. “Open source” is a nice ideal, but it is usually thankless and fraught.

And yet I look around and see a lot of durability. I’m typing this on an operating system that I have used in some fashion since 2004, on a computer that will probably last me the better part of a decade, using a text editor that came out in 2010, in a format that was first developed 20 years ago and has largely remained unchanged since. Then I’ll be sending it to you using a protocol that has changed over the years, but fundamentally exists to get some words from one place to another.