From the days when I studied Greek at school, I seem to remember that at the beginning of The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides states that the true cause of the war was the growing power of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta. However, he also notes that there were two pretexts that sparked the conflict.
Similarly, the last few weeks have brought major changes with the way I use my computer (and other tech toys), and I can see that two pieces of software have sparked the change, but that the underlying cause has been an article published in The Guardian at the end of February on how to Leave big tech behind! This recommends European alternatives to US companies such as Amazon, Google, and Meta. So now, Proton has replaced Gmail, Vivaldi is my new browser, Ecosia my search engine, and Le Chat has become my AI platform of choice; besides gaining in data protection, or so I’m told, I actually like the alternatives more: they tend to by cleaner and simpler, and Le Chat does for free what I could do on the alternative platforms only for a fee.
More than a steep learning curve, all this has brought on creative chaos. As always, when work or life is disrupted in such situations, I take comfort in the work of Ilya Prigione. In simple terms, Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures says that when a system is pushed far from its comfort zone, it doesn’t just fall apart – it can reorganise itself into a new, more complex order. In other words, a bit of chaos and “wasted” energy can be exactly what a system needs to reinvent itself.
And after such a highfalutin post, next time I’ll come back down to earth and reveal the two pieces of software that are making all the difference.
A personal tech revolution
