It’s my first name and a single syllable of my last name. This is my standard user account that all my family and friends know, so if they want to find me online, they know what to look for.
I used to do private user accounts so I could post things that I didn’t want people in my life to find, but then I realized I just didn’t care to use them. I stay true to myself, even online. Anything I post is what I would happily share with anyone in my life anyway, so there’s no reason for me to maintain multiple accounts anymore.
Also, I’m retired now, so it’s not like I need to watch what I say online. I don’t have to fear my boss finding less-than-professional social media content I’ve posted. My friends are all still working and they get really nervous about broadcasting our chats, like when I’m trying to stream our gaming sessions on Twitch. They sometimes vent about their work, and they’re afraid of their employer finding it. (BTW, I don’t record our game sessions.)
One friend in particular will ditch our game nights completely if I mention it’s going to be livestreamed. I live halfway across the country from him and I don’t even know his employer, but he’s paranoid they’ll somehow stumble across my Twitch stream and recognize his voice or something. I’m lucky if I get 2 viewers all night long, so I’m pretty sure he’s safe.
When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we’d be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.
I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn’t want to give them up.
My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.
I’m grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don’t have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.
I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I’ve spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.
I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can’t spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don’t know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it’d be for the best.