Decentralization of the tech

This post is under construction

I know many of you have been where I have been. You lay down, do just relax because you have a spare 30 minutes in your very busy life. And what is your first instincts? To grab that brick with black mirror (yes, Black Mirror series mentioned). I do that constantly, unfortunately. I’m from generation Z, so I have grown up pretty much my whole life with this lifeless brick, and I grew to hate it. We have been fed, how amazing this technology is, but in reality, I think it mostly imprisoned my mind. It killed my drive and my creativity largely. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And so I decided to go on a journey called Decentralization of the tech.

What is it? I will tell you. By decentralization, I mean to stop being depended on one device. I just want to stop using that brick for everything in my life. It’s same as with Linux, the most effective technology is the one that has one purpose. My phone is my diary, source of enjoyment, streaming videos, movies and series, my audio player, my e-book reader, my primary devices for learning and so on. And I don’t think that my phone does any of it particularly well, except of calling or texting. And so I have begun this journey with one purpose in mind, to just appoint different devices to do what I need to do.

The second side of this decentralization was detaching myself from the ever-growing influence of different algorithms. I was an avid user of different streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney +, HBO and so on. And the issue was really how much the cost was growing, and at the end of the day I DON’T OWN SHI. It is so disgusting really. You don’t own anything, my generation doesn’t own anything. I don’t have music, I don’t have game, I don’t have movies and series. I’m literally left with nothing if I don’t pay every month for the service to provide me with it. So, I decided to own things.

I have spent a ton of time on Reddit for the purpose to find a good audio player, good e-book reader, good anything to make my life truly easier and nicer.

Table of contents

E-book reader / writer deck

We will start from my first purchase an e-book reader. This one is actually tied to the whole writer deck sub-culture/hobby. I felt in love with all these beautiful devices, and I thought to myself, hey, maybe I could have leveraged such deck for my writing needs. It was actually even before I started writing this blog. I explored many options. I mainly wanted some already made options, because I had actually never soldered anything, and I didn’t want to invest a lot of time creating a deck, because I have a lot of different hobbies right now :). So, I will now list options and reasons why I didn’t choose it.

By the way, on the subreddit that I linked, there is a nice list with some commercial options for any beginners out there (or not so beginners).

BYOK

So, first is BYOK, which stands for “Bring Your Own Keyboard”. It is an amazing device really. It’s small, compact, and you can literally carry it anywhere. This is all I actually looked for in a writer deck, because even though big decks look amazing, they are quite useless for my needs. I travel a lot, to school / work, I spend my free time at galleries, cafes, teahouses, so being able to carry it in a small bag was essential to me.

So, why not BYOK? To be frank, while researching I came across a different approach to a writing deck, that I found better for myself, but one day I will actually buy it for myself.

Zero Writer

Then there is this bad boy. I love this device, here you can find it on Crowdsupply and this is a website. I love how it is made as there older writer decks with small screen, but not as small, and hot swappable keyboard. So you are also free to customize your own switches and key caps. I think it is a great device, and I’m also very stocked about the creation of The Zerowriter company.

At some point, I was considering to pledge and buying this product, because people are very satisfied with it, but it didn’t really match my need for transportability. So, at the end I chose not to buy it right now.

Writer decks by Un Kyu Lee

Whilst doing my research I have come into contact with decks made by Un Kyu Lee (this is his timeline on Reddit). They have their own little shop on Tindie, where you can find different writer decks. They also have their GitHub, so you can build them at home.

So I was browsing their creations, and I found this project called The PDA Terminal. Through this project I found a combo: small keyboard and e-book reader, here it is a Boox Palma 2. I have bought myself the CACOE keyboard and I use it daily really.

Here, we are getting to the finish line of my search. I had researched more about the Boox Palma, and I found this little device quite intriguing. I had never seen such small e-book reader that can also be used as an everyday smartphone. And so, I have bought myself a bit newer version of this series, Boox Palma 2 Pro.

What I landed on?

And omg, this device had helped me a lot. I use it to write drafts for this blog (so prepare yourself for more reading in the future). I also started to read my huge backlog of research papers. I just actually shifted all my learning to this device. You can carry it anywhere (because it is a literally a smartphone), it is fast, so writing on it with the CACOE keyboard feel amazing. I’m overall very happy with it and I think, that just moving all my learning to a free of distraction device was a huge step for my wellbeing.

I started to use my smartphone less, so this part of my journey is finished I will eventually buy some of the afore mentioned devices, but for now, my heart is very content.

Audio player (and earphones)

Next stop, on my journey, was solving the issue with YouTube Music algorithm. I recently wrote a post about the effects of the algorithm on our wellbeing (check it out here), and when I was writing it I thought that the situation is very similar to music algorithms. By that I mean, when you hit the music on your “For you” page you are sent to a shuffle of music you like with music that algorithm deemed you might like. But if you actually look at that curated playlist, it is most likely not coherent. The music does not match in genre, vibes or anything. And yes, I know, there is a special shuffle that make you a curated playlist based on a genre or artists, but let’s be honest, it’s far from great. My algorithm does not understand that if I listen to Daughter that I am so sad that I don’t want to hear Lorde even though I love her. And that’s what I mean, these playlists are a mix of music that together doesn’t make sense, and so each new song is different in emotional response, and thus you are again on emotional roller-coast.

My way of solving this was to download all the music I love, and oh boy it is a lot of GB of data, but worth it. I also bought myself a audio player and placed it all there. But if you are going to embark on this journey, you really don’t need to buy yourself an expansive player, use your phone as one, if you of course are not looking for the best possible music quality the market has to offer.

What I landed on?

But I am and audiophile, so I had to buy myself a player. And not just any audio player, but a hi-fi audio player. After a minimal research, at night, I did an impulse buy and bought myself FiiO M21. Later, after some actual research I actually found out that it is a very good audio player.