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Is tech running my life?

I am a geek, I can not lie. I have always loved science, tech, sci-fi, LOTR, computers and board games. I regularly get teased by my Girlfriend for checking my phone too often. Usually I am checking twitter, (my tech list) lifehacker, the tech and science section of BBC news and other sources of wonderful geeky news and information. But what I am trying to get my head around at the moment is this. 

 "Is tech running my life or helping me improve my life?"

 The tools that are designed to make my life easier and save time take time and effort. There is a huge range in tech in how much effort you need to put in. An example of low input high convenience is my amazon Kindle, kindle is a wonderful light ebook reader. It is meant to keep hundreds/thousands of books at your fingertips in one small device. The device is quite simple to use but you do need to keep it charged and have to get the books on it, Usually through the on board kindle book store or by using the webstore on a laptop. Relatively small effort for the huge benefit of hundreds/thousands of books easily accessible.

On the other extreme you have Linux and RaspberryPi this operating system eco system and coding based hardware are much cheaper and/or free. They promise a way to do tech based things without paying high license fees to either Microsoft or Apple. They promise increased flexibility to get a computer that will do exactly what you want it to do. The RaspberryPi has the promise of linking easier to other hardware and electronics. So if Linux is free and technically more flexible and useful why is it still a tiny percentage of total global computer users? Basically it is a Very High effort tech option. There is an old tech joke of "Linux is only free if your time is worthless". Not only is there a set up effort. Most people don't play around with changing operating systems until they buy a new computer. Some Linux distributions still take a higher level of set up effort but even after set up it takes time to learn a new operating system. This to me is the key reason why people don't want to try Linux. It is too much effort. 

So in balance across my life is most of my tech lower effort then benefit or do I put more effort into the tech then benefit I derive from the tech. I'm not sure and to blur the lines some more, i enjoy tinkering with tech. It is a hobby. So tech is definitely important to my life, it takes up a significant part of my life but I do not think it is running my life. I derive more benefit (partly entertainment) from tech then the effort I need to put in. Maybe the only way to find out is to have a tech sabbatical?
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Comments

Network admin said…
I don't completely agree.Linux is unpopular because people have grown up on Windows.

If you only need to do some browsing,text editing and multimedia then learning to use a linux distribution that advertises itself as user friendly like Ubuntu or Mint can be just as fast (or even faster) as learning yourself to use Windows 8 with the new metro interface.

Obviously if you are not a geek then gentoo,slackware,debian and arch or even LFS are not for you(and never were).And if you do not do geeky things you don't even need a command line.

The rest of the text is ok.
31 August 2014 at 08:04
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