I am in a constant struggle with all the electronic crap and "upgrades" that do nothing to improve
my life. Having to buy new printers, phones, hard drives, cloud crap, "life-lock" identity theft protection, phone, internet cable "plans" and contracts? (WTF), passwords in unlimited quantity, spam on phone and internet (despite "no call" registration), etc., etc. It is accelerating and in concert with the other, not insignificant daily issues (mass shootings, rising domestic terrorism, ongoing systemic racism, voter suppression, militarization of police (thanks W for starting that with Iraq war surplus to PD's and returning vets trained to kill becoming cops; sorry personal disdain for the Bush/ Cheney cabal).
NONE of this is improving the quality of our existence. We have a fractured society that is now subject to the propaganda/ misinformation reaching the heavily armed and dis-enfranchised by virtue of the multi media platforms. We can't even agree to wear masks in the face of a global pandemic, let alone agree on the basics like spending on infrastructure, education and the environment. Pitiful. I want my black, 8 pound indestructible rotary phone back (well maybe a "princess" touchtone)..... All done for now.
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Pick up to use the phone and you could hear your neighbor(s) talking to someone else. Now, when I say "neighbor", they could be as much as a mile away. We lived in the country, you see.
Yeah, technology was nice for a little while, but it's gone on entirely too long now. If we could have stopped before cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter, it would have been heavenly. (But mRNA could still be discovered).
Remember when conspiracy theorists thought the phone companies were were spying on us, and collecting all of our information? That was even before the evil interwebs. That was back in the 80s. Everyone collects information on us now, but I still think the telephone companies run the world. 
because of the nature of my work I have to have more than one! It just sucks keeping up with them AND my laptop at home, and don't even get me started on the HUNDREDS of passwords I have 
but damn, that’s it. I really don’t need anything else.....texting is it for me. 
i hate it too and avoid it at all costs. But i found that switching my keyboard to Swiftkey made it a little easier for me. It predicts and remembers better and it's almost like a game swiping through the letters to form a word.
As to the OPs main point, i use Macs all the way around and yeah, the updates are coming in fast. Most of them are security and native app updates though and they download themselves, so i'm not bothered.
I don't know why people hate the phone so much or feel like you need to answer their text immediately. I rarely look at my phone and I have very clumsy fingers, so texting is very laborious for me. If the answer is complicated, I call them back or email them instead of texting them.
You miss so much by not having that face to face interaction or even hearing the person's voice. I just feel like none of my personality comes through in a text and nor does it feel personal when I receive texts from others. It is my least favorite way to communicate. Don't even get me started on the kids! 
Unlimited 5G data, no throttling, no caps. Unlimited Texting (no extra plan needed), International access included. 80gb of Hotspot data (no throttling). No contract. Paid 250 for my phone (OnePlus Nord N10 5G)
oh and free Netflix 
T-Mobile
You don't often hear reference to him as "David Thoreau".
Walden is my all time favorite book and I read an awful lot and have all my life. It's a "bible" for me and guided me very early on in life as to how to live with a smaller footprint on this earth.
Just did some shopping from my armchair, choosing from many nice selections that would have been unimaginable, completely impossible!, when I was younger. My husband just tested out Zoom because a friend is having his 90th birthday party this afternoon; so many of us are scattered around different states, a couple still in Thailand where they go every winter, but we expect to see each other there.
The frustration of the day is our password saver, which isn't. It's kind of hard to hand enter symbols we've never seen before in a 20-digit computer-generated string.
I will admit here, though not to her, that the computerized foaming hand soap dispenser our daughter decided we needed is a bit much. It's not on line (why not?!), so my husband actually had to call customer service when it started spitting soap every time we went in the powder room. Turned out it just needed rebooting. 
Even if malignant use of the internet is dangerously out of control now, the information age is an enormous gift to humanity. And what we're doing with it already is far too big and profound for me to encompass, just know it's happening.
remember ordering books through the library for papers. So exciting to browse the interlibrary loan systems for possibilities. Until I got busy and learned to choose my topics based on sources in my college library. After all, they weren't important theses.
I've lost a lot of my attention span due to health reasons, a real shame because in earlier years I would have chosen the kinds of topics I once read everything I could find about -- but immersed in them via the internet at home. Maybe kick something off with an intriguing MOOC, discussing the subject with students who sign up for them from around the world.
We're living in times of great wonders and blessings.
Island). And yes, I read all the time. Didn't hurt me none, far as I know!
Because of her map of RNA, science can understand how microbes immunize themselves, and now scientists can follow the microbial CRSPR system and take it from there.
She opened the map of life and got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that.
I'm no scientist, but this book reveals the best reasons why they don't do it for the money.
(sorry this is so big, but it's the only photo I could find)
may I make the pitch about why the Apple iPhone is worth every penny by saving you from all that? When I got it as a gift in 2007 I used PC operating systems (Dell and VAIO) but after checking out 'The Missing Manual' (Amazon) on Macs (you can get one for the iPhone, too), I got a Mac Book Pro and never had a minute of worry about ads, blockers, or any other security issues ever again. When you consider that they last beyond the 2-3 year lifespan of pc's, the cost is SO much less; mine still runs well after 12 years. Not to mention that for 12 years it saved me all the daily frazzle, added to my quality of life so much that I'd even call them the best tech investment one could make.
Free lessons at Apple stores. Nice, smart, kind young people who explain every single little thing you don't know.
End of pitch.
its not even that old. I tried to go up from High Sierra to Mohave in order to do my taxes on Turbo Tax (that OS was required) and learned that I couldn't do it. I'll have to do the taxes on TT's online version and that seems slightly risky.
As for phones, I stupidly ditched my reliable landline to go to all-cell. I can barely make or receive a phone call since the wifi reception is so poor at my house. I'm going to spend the afternoon installing a wifi "booster" to see if that helps. So I have an expensive cell phone plus an expensive "booster" that are replacing my good old landline.
Not everything is an improvement. 
you started way before me. My old Mac Book Pro (they might not even make them anymore) has upgraded from Leopard to Yosemite to El Capitan (about 9 upgrades) and now High Sierra, fourth below the highest upgrade. I'll try for Mojave, but it might not work; I'll see. The browser seems to work fine, and though I thought of getting an Air for a minute, decided against it.
Unix, eh? You're way ahead of me, though my understanding is that the MacOS is one version of Unix. My son, an IT expert, uses Unix and Linux stuff but I don't see what I would need it for.
Yah, I came late in the 'insanely great' period, but I appreciate its superior engineering. It's probably just the inertia of familiarity, but I hope not to have to get another in my lifetime, either.
is a national disgrace that imposes (sometimes lethal) hardships on those who don't have it. Genuine hardships. This administration will do its best to fix something that's now part and parcel of old-fashioned problems like poverty, hunger, deprivations of all kinds.
We complain about multiple entities, but how about the toll of time and labor from walking several blocks to the nearest laundromat after taking the bus to and from work, after getting off near the nearest store, which has the nearest pay phone to use to call the gas company it if wasn't already closed, and then after walking home with groceries to make dinner and check homework?
Though these days I spend too much time growling from the comfort of my armchair at a program that's not working, it's been decades since I drove across town and stood in line to pay a bill because it was too late to mail payment.
But hey -- why not simplify your life? Turn it all off and walk away for a while? It's spring outside.
Lifelock was a joke until they got bought by Symantec / Norton. Now they're slightly less of a joke, but still a joke. And Norton is still kind of a joke when there's much better anti-virus software out there. Same with companies like Experian - they're really selling an invisible product. 
And yeah the constant upgrading is infuriating. But what's even more infuriating is the constant updating - I swear, everything I own that has an operating system gets updates after updates, and it is so maddening.
wikipedia
I'll pick it up, tap the receiver cradle a few times to alert the operator, and ask them to connect me with whoever I want to talk to.
I've seen people do this with their "smart speakers" but it sort of scares me.
I want a phone that is hung up and disconnected when I hang it up, not some machine that is always listening.
That seems to be the motif of many of the responses.
My personal faves: the rant about smart refrigerators and the Luddite who wants their VCR back.
Emergencies can be dealt with with a pay as you go cell with the number given only to your loved ones. Easy, and not too much $. We call it the "bat phone." God, I'm getting old!
Seriously though, the tech can be overwhelming, and I do understand. I'm glad to be able to video call friends in the US, learn French and Latin on line, manage my bank and credit cards, and navigate back roads with an inbuilt GPS.
