Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (00:20)
Welcome back to Analogish. I'm excited today. I found Derek Beyer, who is the guest today through a viral post. We're going to talk about that. When I was searching for folks to talk about some of these topics and you are a writer and self-described utopian, which I definitely want to know more about. You have a sub-stack called Otherworlds Catalog. It's a newsletter that examines how stories, technology and ideas shape possible futures.
and your work explores speculative fiction, utopian philosophy, and a humanities relationship to technology. So very fitting for what I'm trying to do with the show, which is exploring this balance of lo-fi and lo-fi living in a hi-fi world and how we start to figure that out when we can't escape at all. And speaking to, well, first of all, hi, Derek. Yes, thank you for being here. I was gonna say speaking to the fact that we can't escape it, I was saying that, unfortunately, the program that I use to record these podcasts,
Derek Beyer (01:04)
Hi! Hello, thanks for having me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (01:13)
works best and maybe only really on Chrome. And I was reading your piece and I know Chrome was one of the things you were trying to leave. And you said, well, actually my work has made me go back on Chrome. like, there is no, there is no true escape, is there? mean, for most 99.99 % of us.
Derek Beyer (01:28)
Yeah, it really is all over the place and there's so many things that tie together it feels very hard to pull them apart. I think about this with the people who are trying to escape, especially like our smartphones and
Even if you are like, I'm willing to give up Instagram and TikTok and all the things that make you feel bad about it. People are joining soccer leagues that are like, just check in for the match on your app. People have kids who are like their extracurricular activities require them to have an app. You need to have your boarding pass. It's, it's really, really difficult to pull it all apart. ⁓ but I also, I think I in trying to do this have come to appreciate that the point is not to get it perfect to like banish it from your
life, but to really take control over where it comes back into your life. I don't feel so bad about using Chrome occasionally because I don't rely so heavily on it.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (02:19)
That couldn't be a better place to start, Derek, so thank you. So this post that I came across and so did so many other people, it was called How I Disconnected from Tech in 2025. And what I'm curious about, because I know that you said you had this feeling of nothing feeling real and tech sort of changing your relationship almost with reality, but I'm wondering, is there a specific moment or something that was sort of like the final straw that made you say, I really need to unpack this more, I really need to dig in and figure out.
How much am I dependent on tech and how much is it controlling sort of how I see the world around me?
Derek Beyer (02:53)
Yeah, so for me, I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I do New Year's themes. I pick a theme for the year because it allows me to orient towards what I want more of or less of in my life. And it means that I don't have like a fail state. Whereas if you're going to say, I'm going to run a marathon in March, you sprain your ankle and then you haven't run a marathon and you have failed your resolution instead. I
every December end up thinking a lot about what do I want the next year to look like or feel like or have more of and at the end of 2024 I was feeling really disconnected was like a word that kept coming up for me. It was important that this thing like feel resonant that it and and I kept feeling this feeling of like I feel disconnected and
The question then is like disconnected from what? Like what do you feel disconnected from? And I thought a lot about like, I want to be connected to my immediate reality. I want to be connected to my friends. want to be... There were so many good things I wanted to be connected to. And I thought at the beginning that that was really going to be so much of the focus. And it was, I did a lot of work on that stuff. But also what came through for me is that a lot of what was making me feel disconnected was the fact that I was so connected to technology.
technology,
that everything was mediated, that like insofar as I had friends, I had them through social media apps and I had them, I experienced friends, I experienced everybody through these mediated technologies that made us sound different and feel different and look different. It was this distorted and I was like, is this real or is this different platforms and different technologies change how things
look and feel and sound. Like when you're on Instagram, everybody's on vacation for whatever reason. And that's not reality, but it feels like reality because it distorts in that direction. And so I thought if I want, as I started really thinking about it in the early part of 2025, I thought, know what, disconnecting from tech, reclaiming.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (04:38)
you
Derek Beyer (04:51)
my relationship with these things, feeling like I had agency over them as opposed to them having agency over me. Because as I really started to think about it, was like, using Google Photos is distorting my idea of what my life looks like because it's choosing what to surface and how to arrange it. It's this interface. And I wanted to have more control on that relationship.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (05:13)
Interesting. And it's so funny you say you're feeling disconnected because I think so much of what technology keeps trying to make us believe about it is that it's making us more connected. You and I live in different states, yet here we are having a conversation, right? And we met through Substack in a place that we might not have other like our paths probably would have never crossed in life. You know, I'm able to stay in theory and touch with people because I can quickly send them a text. I can see what they're doing in their lives through social media.
all these things, and yet I don't think you're alone in that feeling of I've never been more connected and yet have never felt less connected in a way. It's so interesting, isn't it? How the promise is not at all what I think many of us are feeling like it's delivering.
Derek Beyer (05:58)
Yeah, absolutely. That was, I remember going around and around with that word of like, I want to feel connected and on some level, I mean, this is, this is a thing that you feel when you try and disconnect from some of these things as you go, but aren't I disconnecting myself by doing this? I think this is like, you know, we're all, what, we talk about being addicted to certain technologies, but some of them, it's, they have other mechanisms of keeping us.
on board the platform that are not just addiction where I think the biggest one was something like Instagram. It's not even just fear of missing out but fear of being disconnected that like if I give up this network that I've built here then I do not have connection to my friends. It weirdly
Yes, it feels connected, but also that's the same thing that's making me feel disconnected. It's really not clear cut. ⁓ I am not like an anti-tech person per se. I guess like what, intentional tech? The thing is I love technology. I'm very curious about it. I love to experiment, but I really do not want it to be controlling my experience. I hate the feeling of having a hand on the back of
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (06:42)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (07:03)
my neck kind of pushing me this way and that way. But it can be a wonderful connector. It's amazing that we can have this conversation and that you and I can meet because of something like this. Because I posted something on Substack and you've arranged a call for your podcast. That's fascinating. It does have the power to connect and also I think we just have to be really mindful of how we interact with them to get more of the good and less of the bad.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:28)
Yeah,
I mean, that's the goal. And I don't want to presume too much, but I'm thinking, Derek, you're probably millennial ish. Maybe is that a fair guess? OK, so and I'm a little older. I'm Gen X, young Gen X, I like to say, but still Gen X. I grew up in a world where I distinctly remember a life before the Internet and a life after the Internet. remember drinking from the garden hose. All that they say about us Gen Xers is true. Like we were fair old children running wild, but we had an experience of life.
Derek Beyer (07:35)
Sure.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:55)
that was very different and millennials were the beginning, think, of formative years, feeling much more tech adjacent, at least if not reliant. And now I worry for my child who's not even Gen Z, but Gen Alpha, where there is no other understanding of reality beyond this heavy usage and dependency on technology. So I'm curious just with your age and where you're kind of at.
Were you feeling like a nostalgia feeling? Were you longing for a life that you remembered before this sort of feeling of, oh, I'm getting too dependent? Or was it like you didn't really know a different world, but because you write and read a lot of, you know, sort of sci-fi, utopian, that kind of thing, was it more of a dreaming of a world that you didn't really know that could exist? I'm just curious about your own experience with pre-tech living.
Derek Beyer (08:41)
Yeah, absolutely. I think for my particular positioning in the timeline, I...
I did grow up with the technology, again, it was like, I think about being in middle school, being in my formative years, and it was like, I had a desktop computer and that computer could get on the internet. And that's a very different relationship that I had now. And the sort of pathway in was being like, I have an iPod, it can play music. It was, which is ultimately not such a different paradigm from having a record player or a CD player. Like it's still a device and I think
I think a lot of people in my age bracket don't just like...
I think there is some nostalgia for this time in which it was like, it's not that we dislike technology or dislike the internet inherently, but we feel like there was a beautiful moment that like, I look back on that fondly, certainly. And some part of what I have been doing here has been nostalgia driven. It has been like, have gotten, I have an iPod again, ⁓ but also I'm experiencing technology that
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (09:43)
I saw, yeah.
Derek Beyer (09:50)
Did not experience at the time but is from that time like I've been playing around with compact digital cameras lately because I tried getting into film and I like film I'm getting into photography and But film is very fussy and it's I don't have any nostalgia for it in particular It's it's cool. It's fun, but it's also like Expensive you have to get it developed sometimes a roll a whole roll just doesn't come out and Dedicated devices this is something that I went into in my piece a little bit is like
it's not just getting rid of things but sometimes it's like pulling them apart. I've seen this idea come up of like basically disarming your phone because the phone tries to be an everything device. tries to be... you're watching videos, you're recording videos, you're calling your friends, you're playing video games, you're doing absolutely everything on it and by trying to like intentionally pull out separate functions
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (10:25)
Right.
Derek Beyer (10:37)
It's like that's one less opportunity that my phone can have control over me. And even though I still have, you know, I have a smartphone, I have an iPhone, but I pulled so much out of it that it feels a lot less threatening to me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (10:50)
Well, and that's what I really loved about what you wrote and about your approach, because it feels very aligned with what I'm hoping this show does for folks. For people who are, regardless of whether it's nostalgia reasons or just like an exhaustion, overwhelm reason or whatever it is that you're feeling. And I think AI is just accelerating this for so many of us. This feeling of that disconnection or the overwhelm or the always being on, whatever that feeling is, it has you saying,
I need to reevaluate my relationship with technology. I don't think puritanical approaches work for most people, right? This idea of, then you just got to stop it all. And if you don't, you're a horrible person and you're, whatever. Like, I don't think that works for most of us. And I love that you were like, no, this is about intentionality. You know, it's about, it's about awareness first, just noticing where all of this is showing up in my life, how I'm using it, being more thoughtful and intentional. And really it's about agency, taking back some sense of control, because so many of us are just,
on this ride that feels inevitable and some of what you're talking about just like with the film, right? It is almost to a point where that's a hobby that's a very expensive hobby now where it used to be the norm and it starts to feel like inevitable that well, no, can't even go take a step back because I'm on this ride and we're past that technology. And something you said in the, I don't know if it was in your piece or when you submitted stuff to me, but you said that there isn't one inevitable future. And so you have this weird mix of tech optimism and tech.
Derek Beyer (12:11)
Yes.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (12:14)
pessimism that I think is exactly what I'm wanting with analog-ish, like acknowledging that it's like a little this weird tension that we all feel. And I just wonder like where does speculative fiction and I'm listening right now to Positive Obsession, the biography about Octavia Butler from
Susanna Morris. And it's fantastic and I love Octavia Butler. I don't read a lot of speculative fiction, but I have been reading more, especially by Black authors. And I'm just curious, how does that affect how you're thinking about the future and this like inevitability thing that I hear so many people saying with like AI, like I gotta get on because the ride's going without me.
Derek Beyer (12:42)
Yeah.
what I'm getting at with my publication a little bit and what I'm getting at with that, when I talk about utopianism, what I mean is not like, that word gets used a lot of different ways.
Sometimes it means a sort of like grand Promethean blueprint future. Certainly some of the tech people in San Francisco are that. Like you might pejoratively call them utopians in that sense, but that's not how I mean it. What I mean is that utopianism is about imagining a future. That's what Octavia Butler does. That's what Ursula K. Le Guin does. It's what Kim Stanley Robinson does. And these futures are not
they're not contradictory, they all exist at the same time, they form this sort of super image. Like everybody, if we stopped and took a moment and imagined what we think a better future looks like, they're all kind of correct or good in some way and the point is to sort of share them, to have this convergence.
And I think, I mean, the opposite of things being inevitable is like, actually, what I love about science fiction and speculative fiction is that it is, it shows the contingency of things. That actually, quite the opposite, everything is not inevitable. That everything is a product of certain decisions and certain forces. And that every piece of science fiction, I think that the base definition of it is, or speculative fiction, is that it changes just one thing a little bit and then sees how it plays out differently.
And that is, at base, its contingency. It's an old argument, like, do we live in Brave New World or do we live in 1984? And I would say to people, like, we all live in some collage future of every science fiction writers, I mean, the good ones, or people who got some part of it right. But we also live in Philip K. Dick's future. Like, everything is, there is surveillance, there is...
propaganda, is also entertainment, is also numbing, there is also the distortion of reality. It's all of these things and these are all ways of understanding what we're experiencing and what we're doing and we can
When I talk about utopianism and this is the idea of other worlds catalog, it's not just a better world is possible or another world is possible, but other worlds are possible. That there are many different ways things can be and that they are and that they were. That's all a bit abstract, but that's, and I think looking at these technologies, things were different. They were different and they can be different.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (15:10)
Yeah, and I like that piece too around to some degree it is what we as individuals individually decide to do is what creates this collective new experience because I think sometimes we start to feel that sense of losing agency of I have no power here to affect any real change. So then I'm just going to why not or that kind of feeling that you it's sort of this nihilist kind of thing that we can all begin to feel and.
there maybe there's some truth to some degree of around like me individually alone is not necessarily going to stop the AI train, but us individually making different choices about our relationship with technology will necessarily affect what the future looks like. And I just wonder what you feel about AI in general, like just a, cause this was written sort of just at the beginning, I think of where AI has just become in this last year and a half, two years has just been a lot. So how are you exploring that?
Derek Beyer (15:58)
Sure.
I mean, I do just want to talk about for just a second what you said about the, I do think that I am trying to hold something between optimism and pessimism. And when people talk about, either talk, often there are two perspectives of either we, we, are powerless or the individual is all that matters. It's the sense of like,
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (16:05)
Yeah, please.
Yes.
Derek Beyer (16:21)
You know, nothing I do matters because there's a giant system somewhere that makes everything bad and therefore I'm absolved on some level. Even if you're despairing, you're absolved. I don't have to do anything because it's all broken, so good for me. Or it is...
⁓ It's all about individual choice and it's like you you can't be Addressing the system at all because it's just like did you bring your reusable grocery bag? And that's what it comes down to and I think both of those are disempowering but in their ways and they're also both true that I believe in like taking both personal and systemic action and and it's also like an an imperative for us as human beings to
Like if we want to be steadfast, which is I think something that I've identified as a virtue for utopians, like if you believe in building a better future, have to figure out how to take a breath and know like, hey, we have been doing this for thousands of years. it is all, we've been fighting the good fight and we'll keep fighting the good fight. And that means like not.
trying our best to not let it all come down on us every day because burning out makes that impossible. To your question about AI, yeah, I mean, things have changed radically. I think I was honest in that piece when I said that I was like, I don't feel like there is anything I really have to like disentangle myself from. now is, AI has worked its way into like everything. ⁓
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (17:41)
I have free thing.
Derek Beyer (17:42)
And I have a hard time talking about it even because I...
It feels like I'm talking about, we're talking about like a million different technologies that are all in different states of development and deployment and everybody has like a different understanding of them. And so we're we're like arguing about the definition. We like have different definitions of the same words and we're like, this is bad and this is good. And I am intolerant of, course, like just full blown optimism about it. There's like obviously some very real risks and like individual harms
that happen in real time with interacting with some of these technologies, and we don't know exactly what those are. And I also feel the urge to push back about some amount of alarmism because it can become very reactive and very, and it is scary. I wanna sit with that. Like it is, there are moments, I'm a writer, there are moments where it's like maybe it is gonna get rid of writing.
I don't actually think that's true, ⁓ I have felt the anxiety. I have felt that interacting with some of the products, I'm like, this is changing my brain.
But I also just want to keep in mind that again, like we have, we do have agency in these contexts. And yes, there are people making big decisions and big investments that will shape the structure. But I'm trying to be mindful about what I'm doing now in the same way that I'm being mindful about like the things that I was changing. I'm trying to be like, I think being circumspect and being introspective as you interact with these technologies and say,
how does this change my experience of the world is huge.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (19:17)
I don't want to go too in depth into your piece and like your process because people can read it. I will link to it. There's an amazing spreadsheet like you can follow all this stuff. But I will just kind of give this higher level overview, which is literally that a spreadsheet, which was massive. And you did a very like for something that the way you're talking about it feels sort of more emotional and all of that. But there was a definite logical approach to this big old spreadsheet.
Derek Beyer (19:42)
you
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (19:43)
all of
the things you're using, also getting into the feelings around them, how do they make you feel, which is some of what you're talking about, what would you maybe like to see change, what are some alternatives, what are some different ways of looking at this? And you spent, like you said, a year, and it sounds like you're still gonna be in the process and we can talk about that, but like a real year of going through sort of very deliberately, item by item, of all of these things and thinking through.
How is this serving me? How is it harming me? What do I want the relationship to look like? And just, you know, again, people can read for the tool by tool kind of thing we don't have to get into, but I would love to know more about like, just that process for you. It's a, that was a big undertaking. I think for a lot of people, they might give up pretty quickly. So what kept you going? What was the experience like? Were there times where you were like, this is too...
Derek Beyer (20:16)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (20:31)
much. I just want to hear some of your like, your own personal experiences with that process that feels daunting.
Derek Beyer (20:38)
I think I took it up in the same way that I take up. I honestly think I've benefited from being a writer where I have a practice. I'm working on a novel and I wake up before work every day and I spend like an hour and a half working on a novel. And it's that way with like, I'm also a runner. And if you're a runner, is about, it is not like go out and push yourself absolutely as hard as you can and that's where you get the results.
It is get out there very regularly and do your best and some days are gonna feel pretty bad. Some days you're gonna walk outside and you're gonna feel, it's gross. I don't wanna do this. And some days you gotta know how to let yourself off the hook in the right way. Some days you've gotta say, I'm too tired, life was too crazy today, I'm not gonna do it.
And also that is not me saying I'm done, this was stupid, I give up on it. And I think that's kind of how I took the approach with changing my relationship with technology as well, where I know that the spreadsheet looks huge and it seems like a huge undertaking, but it was really just doing a little bit of work pretty regularly. And the thing is, again, I've learned from running, I've learned from writing, is that a little bit pretty regularly adds up to a lot. And...
⁓ So I was picking away typically at like one or two things. There were weeks where it was really just like I was having fun learning about iPods. It was a hobby on some level, some of it was just fun. I've spent so much time looking at like retro gaming handhelds and digital cameras and iPods and stuff and that's just, I mean...
Did it really change my relationship with technology or was I engaging in a hobby? And then some of it was just like plugging away and I could put on a podcast. The real thing about the spreadsheet is that it allowed me to break it down into small pieces. I think the technosphere feels like one giant indivisible blob and that is why it feels so hard to act on and so immense. And I think what I am...
saying a little bit or showing in that process with that spreadsheet is actually you can sit down and like there's not an answer you don't already have because the answer is not like what's the right technology or it's just literally write down what you have write down what you think and feel about it
make a choice about what you want it to be. And you can keep revising that. I made revisions all along the way. There were things where I deeply changed my relationship to a thing and then didn't end up getting rid of it completely. You know, I really thought at the end I was like, and then I'm not going to have an iPhone when all of this is over. And I still haven't found something to replace it with. But it feels, it feels much better. And it's
Again, mean, that's the contingency is finding a way to get traction against it. And I think when you break something down into much smaller pieces, it becomes much easier to act on.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (23:24)
going back to some of that, like systemic part of this to a degree, like and reading what you were saying and what you just said there, it's so much of this is by design. Right. It's not just the addiction piece. But like you said, the fact that it becomes like the tentacles are so ingrained in all of your life that when you start picking apart, where am I using tech or what is that like reading your piece? It just made me think of my God, because then that would be connected to that. Like I started doing some of these leaps of
Derek Beyer (23:33)
Mhm.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (23:52)
If I undid this, would affect the dominoes of what it affects and how overwhelming that feels. And it has been made that way so that it does feel too overwhelming to even tackle it, right? mean, this is not nothing's not intentional,
Derek Beyer (24:03)
yeah.
No, absolutely. There are so many ways in which it becomes a dependency, right? Like think we talk certain ways about the technology that it's like, it's really addictive. It's really like you want to watch so much TikTok because TikTok is so stimulating. But there's all these other things where it's like, I bought into storing my photos on Google Photos when the first time I ran out of storage on my phone in like 2014. And I just thought, well, I'll just, this is great. It backs them up automatically.
and then I can delete them off my phone and now I have space on my phone. And then you have a lot of photos and you are paying for storage and then you have to say, I mean it's the same principle that storage lockers operate on, right? A lot of storage locker facilities are like, there's a low entry fee to put your stuff in a storage locker here. And then in three months, oops, we raised the rates. And three months after that, we've raised the rates and things keep getting more expensive but all of your stuff is sitting there and...
They are counting on the inertia, are counting on it being, I mean, it can't be repeated enough that these, really big companies, the Facebooks of the world are hiring the top psychology grads, the people who would be designing slot machines and casinos to make them hyper stimulating. And it just is, you know, it is like pulling weeds sometimes. ⁓
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (25:26)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (25:27)
It doesn't stop it, much like there's no way to stop getting email completely, but there are victories to be had, and I think it changes dynamics.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (25:36)
and that's where this idea of breaking it down slowly but surely and you walk through that you talk about like this is this is not an overnight endeavor, It's gonna be a process and one that you will probably continue to have to do again now AI in the ways that it's showing up and you know, technology keeps evolving and they keep finding ways to kind of try to get the hooks into you and so having to continue to reevaluate. I'm wondering for you what was most surprising in your journey of disconnection?
Derek Beyer (26:03)
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think I was surprised...
actually how it isn't different afterwards. when I think about how you feel about the technosphere or whatever word we want to use for it, it feels like it is.
it's very, its presence is very noticeable and its absence is definitely more pleasant. I can remember how it felt then and I know how it feels now and it's very different. And I notice it most of all when I talk to other people and I hear what their experience of it is and I go, I remember that. It did feel like that. But mostly it is the absence of that feeling. It's like the absence of hunger doesn't feel like anything necessarily, right? Like full might feel like something, but a lot of times it's just
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (26:42)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (26:45)
like I'm not I'm just not hungry and there is a level on which there is just an absence but that that feels good I don't feel like I think I don't necessarily think I would have thought that I'd feel like a monk or I would feel enlightened before because of course human beings existed for millions of years without these you know widgets and doodads but I it just feels it just feels normal it just feels and and
And I mean, yeah, to your point, it is about, this was ⁓ a year of intervention and it is slowing down now. am like, I have very recently, I think a huge milestone for me was I do not need Gmail anymore. I am out. I can log in to everything with something else. I am not getting emails to that account that I care about. And that was a lot ⁓ of work.
And I am now, but the thing becomes then, how do you continue to evaluate it as stuff is new? Because it's easier to get off of it when it's new and when it's fresh in your life. And you can be noticing in real time, I think we were naive. Like as a millennial coming up with it, you're like, there's this new app that orders a car to you and that's great. And there will certainly be no negative consequences to a world that has like on-demand food delivery and all of that stuff.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:00)
strangers showing
up to pick you up in their car, what could go wrong?
Derek Beyer (28:04)
Yeah, what
could go wrong? And now as I encounter new technologies, think we are, I think we're less naive and can better evaluate that stuff in real time.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:15)
I mean, I do feel like that's been happening for a while for a lot of people. We've been sort of doing that. And I just really, don't know, again, the timing of the show for me, it is, I really have felt in this last year-ish or more with this rise in AI tools and just the prevalence showing up in everything. mean, even places where you think, why do I need AI in this space? It's everywhere. And I do think that has more more people adopting more of that skepticism that maybe in the past wasn't as...
Derek Beyer (28:40)
Mm-hmm.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:41)
as sharp as it should have been perhaps, where we were just sort of like, it's fun, it's exciting, it's helpful. I mean, they do a great job of framing things this way so that you are like, well, of course, why wouldn't I need this tool? Why wouldn't I want this thing? You also, though, you you're still getting email. You're still emailing. You're just not using email. So some of this is about choosing. And you talk about that in the piece, too. It's like choosing where you do and don't want to like who you do and don't want to give your money to, your attention to those sorts of things. So it's not about
Derek Beyer (28:57)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (29:09)
completely unplugging, but being mindful also about who you're supporting because our attention, our dollars, those are our ways of supporting things. But also, you still work in tech. You said you like tech, like you like doodads and widgets and fun things. Obviously, you have the iPad. No, the I've forgotten. my gosh, look how old I am now. I've forgotten what they're called. iPod. There it is. You your iPod and you're playing with that. But how are you scratching that itch for yourself now?
Derek Beyer (29:21)
Yeah.
Yes!
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (29:36)
that maybe is different than how you scratched your sort of tech part of yourself in years past.
Derek Beyer (29:42)
Yeah, I mean, I do find that it is...
One of the problems that I've encountered with like wrestling with this stuff over the years is that if you manage to get rid of something the batter fills the pan like that attention goes somewhere else you delete Instagram and then you're spending a lot of time on Facebook and you delete Facebook and you're spending a lot of time on YouTube and that that happens I mean it turns out that like I don't like suddenly feel like somebody who never wants to look at the internet I But I do feel like I'm spending my time in better places And I you know, I I spend more time on sub stack which I think the by
virtue of the fact that people there are interested in reading text that is more than a few sentences long or writing text that is more than a few sentences long is helpful. So there's that and I do work in, I would say I work in civic tech because I actually come from the civic side. I studied political science, I have worked in government and
And part of it is that I do believe, I think the reason I work in it is because I do believe that some of this technology can be good. Sometimes the answer is none technology. I often want to say to people like, the best way, I as a civic tech person, the best way to improve a service sometimes is to hire another person to work behind that desk and answer the phones. Sometimes that's the answer. But there are also a lot of, I do important accessibility work in that.
So yeah, I don't believe, I think a lot about the fact that I just don't think.
the answer is ever or could be go back. There is no such thing as go back. there is no, even if I'm very nostalgic for my childhood, there are things about it that are beautiful that I think we should try and maintain. We should try and like maintain this memory about what was great about that, this feeling of space and presence. And some of these choices that I'm making can give us some of that back. That's what I love about like digital cameras is that's one less reason to pull out my phone or interact with it. so you,
Yeah, I'm scratching it by honestly, I mean, just having hobbies of delving into other stuff that I find interesting. you know, it's funny, being bored is a very old problem and just sometimes learning to be bored again.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (31:48)
Which is hard because we are so trained not to be I talked to my kid about boredom being a gift because Creativity comes out of boredom and when we don't give ourselves any boredom What do we think's gonna happen to our creativity muscles? Which brings me to the last thing which is your novel because I saw that you're nearly finished You've talked a little bit about it. Is there anything you can share with us about what your novels about?
Derek Beyer (32:09)
Yeah, absolutely. It's still in protean form. I don't talk about it a whole lot. I've been working on it for years. it is...
It has a lot to do with my publication, actually, because I would say that if I come off as like an optimistic person, it is only because I have grappled so much with despair, honestly. I used to really, I still love, I think it was George Carlin said, if you scratch a cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist. And I think I have been a disappointed idealist. I've been a cynic for a lot of my life. And this book ends up being
about that. I would say that it's a book about disappointed idealism. is about, it is a retro science fiction novel in sort of the vein of a classic James Bond villain of
Somebody who was once a utopian and was knocked down by the world a few too many times and it was actually writing the book that really changed a lot of things for me and like got me to this place because honestly I was some months into writing it I realized I was like I relate to a lot of the problems that this person is going through and working through those questions.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (33:13)
and
Derek Beyer (33:17)
got me to a place where I had a much healthier relationship to them and I was able to see a lot more possibility. I think the most encouraging thing that I could say is that truly we do not, the most hopeful thing I know is that we do not know what the future holds. That there are a lot of unknown unknowns that we do not know what will be done next year or invented or changed or worked on and there are so many possibilities.
human beings are actually not very good at prediction and that means that there are some unseen things that could be good surprises and we truly do not know what they will be or when they will come and there is like that is where hope and possibility lies.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (33:54)
Yeah.
I used to not want to read speculative fiction or sci-fi or that kind of thing because it scared me or would depress me a lot of it. And now, especially because I've been reading more Black authors like Sky Full of Elephants, I really enjoyed like I've been reading more of this. And it's actually that has been providing me some hope because I realized through that, like if we can dream a different world, we can create a different world. And there can be some real optimism inside of that.
Derek Beyer (34:23)
when you mentioned Octavia Butler earlier, it's funny because I think about which authors I think of as my sort of utopian forebears. And Octavia Butler is kind of known for her dystopian work. Most Octavia Butler novels, things are not going great for the people involved in it. But I actually think that Octavia Butler is a bit of a utopian. Sometimes people mention Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents as like, this is a terrible, this is America's future, this is the dystopia.
But that is a book about a very bad future in which the main characters are dreaming of a much better future. That like, even as things are really bad, the main characters are like, I am not absorbing the fact that the world is very bad and that is not going to stop me from dreaming of the day in which things are much better. And I think that's actually the real thing buried in there.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (35:04)
Yes.
And
yes, I think about community and collective care and because that's what actually moves us forward. And I think those with the most marginalized voices are the folks who best understand that.
We could get into a lot of that that's not related to this necessarily, but I've just really been enjoying that work because it has been helping me start to find some optimism in humanity and in our ability as humans to function differently and dream up new worlds. Anyway, thank you for sharing about your book. Thank you for sharing about your disconnection and everything you've been doing and hopefully now reconnection. Are you feeling more connected?
Derek Beyer (35:39)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Especially on, I think, I mean, to go back to things that were surprising to me, the sort of just like very immediate reality. Like a very immediate thing anybody can do is just go for a walk outside and don't and just don't bring your phone. A walk outside without your phone is a wonderful thing to just like look at trees and hear birds and the way in which our senses directly make contact with reality is the big thing that all the screens don't let us do.
and that can be done in 10 minutes.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (36:09)
Well, I was gonna end by asking you what's one thing you want people to do this week. So there it is, go out and walk without a device and see what, just see what you see and what you hear and all of that. Thank you, Derek, so much for being here. How can people learn more about you, connect with you?
Derek Beyer (36:16)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, the substacks the big one. Again, that's Otherworlds catalog. You can visit it at Otherworldscatalog.com. And yeah, I mean, I will be hopefully publishing the novel at some point soon, if you want to hear about that, the substacks probably the best place to find me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (36:35)
Perfect.
thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Derek Beyer (36:38)
Yeah, thank you so much.
Welcome back to Analogish. I'm excited today. I found Derek Beyer, who is the guest today through a viral post. We're going to talk about that. When I was searching for folks to talk about some of these topics and you are a writer and self-described utopian, which I definitely want to know more about. You have a sub-stack called Otherworlds Catalog. It's a newsletter that examines how stories, technology and ideas shape possible futures.
and your work explores speculative fiction, utopian philosophy, and a humanities relationship to technology. So very fitting for what I'm trying to do with the show, which is exploring this balance of lo-fi and lo-fi living in a hi-fi world and how we start to figure that out when we can't escape at all. And speaking to, well, first of all, hi, Derek. Yes, thank you for being here. I was gonna say speaking to the fact that we can't escape it, I was saying that, unfortunately, the program that I use to record these podcasts,
Derek Beyer (01:04)
Hi! Hello, thanks for having me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (01:13)
works best and maybe only really on Chrome. And I was reading your piece and I know Chrome was one of the things you were trying to leave. And you said, well, actually my work has made me go back on Chrome. like, there is no, there is no true escape, is there? mean, for most 99.99 % of us.
Derek Beyer (01:28)
Yeah, it really is all over the place and there's so many things that tie together it feels very hard to pull them apart. I think about this with the people who are trying to escape, especially like our smartphones and
Even if you are like, I'm willing to give up Instagram and TikTok and all the things that make you feel bad about it. People are joining soccer leagues that are like, just check in for the match on your app. People have kids who are like their extracurricular activities require them to have an app. You need to have your boarding pass. It's, it's really, really difficult to pull it all apart. ⁓ but I also, I think I in trying to do this have come to appreciate that the point is not to get it perfect to like banish it from your
life, but to really take control over where it comes back into your life. I don't feel so bad about using Chrome occasionally because I don't rely so heavily on it.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (02:19)
That couldn't be a better place to start, Derek, so thank you. So this post that I came across and so did so many other people, it was called How I Disconnected from Tech in 2025. And what I'm curious about, because I know that you said you had this feeling of nothing feeling real and tech sort of changing your relationship almost with reality, but I'm wondering, is there a specific moment or something that was sort of like the final straw that made you say, I really need to unpack this more, I really need to dig in and figure out.
How much am I dependent on tech and how much is it controlling sort of how I see the world around me?
Derek Beyer (02:53)
Yeah, so for me, I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I do New Year's themes. I pick a theme for the year because it allows me to orient towards what I want more of or less of in my life. And it means that I don't have like a fail state. Whereas if you're going to say, I'm going to run a marathon in March, you sprain your ankle and then you haven't run a marathon and you have failed your resolution instead. I
every December end up thinking a lot about what do I want the next year to look like or feel like or have more of and at the end of 2024 I was feeling really disconnected was like a word that kept coming up for me. It was important that this thing like feel resonant that it and and I kept feeling this feeling of like I feel disconnected and
The question then is like disconnected from what? Like what do you feel disconnected from? And I thought a lot about like, I want to be connected to my immediate reality. I want to be connected to my friends. want to be... There were so many good things I wanted to be connected to. And I thought at the beginning that that was really going to be so much of the focus. And it was, I did a lot of work on that stuff. But also what came through for me is that a lot of what was making me feel disconnected was the fact that I was so connected to technology.
technology,
that everything was mediated, that like insofar as I had friends, I had them through social media apps and I had them, I experienced friends, I experienced everybody through these mediated technologies that made us sound different and feel different and look different. It was this distorted and I was like, is this real or is this different platforms and different technologies change how things
look and feel and sound. Like when you're on Instagram, everybody's on vacation for whatever reason. And that's not reality, but it feels like reality because it distorts in that direction. And so I thought if I want, as I started really thinking about it in the early part of 2025, I thought, know what, disconnecting from tech, reclaiming.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (04:38)
you
Derek Beyer (04:51)
my relationship with these things, feeling like I had agency over them as opposed to them having agency over me. Because as I really started to think about it, was like, using Google Photos is distorting my idea of what my life looks like because it's choosing what to surface and how to arrange it. It's this interface. And I wanted to have more control on that relationship.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (05:13)
Interesting. And it's so funny you say you're feeling disconnected because I think so much of what technology keeps trying to make us believe about it is that it's making us more connected. You and I live in different states, yet here we are having a conversation, right? And we met through Substack in a place that we might not have other like our paths probably would have never crossed in life. You know, I'm able to stay in theory and touch with people because I can quickly send them a text. I can see what they're doing in their lives through social media.
all these things, and yet I don't think you're alone in that feeling of I've never been more connected and yet have never felt less connected in a way. It's so interesting, isn't it? How the promise is not at all what I think many of us are feeling like it's delivering.
Derek Beyer (05:58)
Yeah, absolutely. That was, I remember going around and around with that word of like, I want to feel connected and on some level, I mean, this is, this is a thing that you feel when you try and disconnect from some of these things as you go, but aren't I disconnecting myself by doing this? I think this is like, you know, we're all, what, we talk about being addicted to certain technologies, but some of them, it's, they have other mechanisms of keeping us.
on board the platform that are not just addiction where I think the biggest one was something like Instagram. It's not even just fear of missing out but fear of being disconnected that like if I give up this network that I've built here then I do not have connection to my friends. It weirdly
Yes, it feels connected, but also that's the same thing that's making me feel disconnected. It's really not clear cut. ⁓ I am not like an anti-tech person per se. I guess like what, intentional tech? The thing is I love technology. I'm very curious about it. I love to experiment, but I really do not want it to be controlling my experience. I hate the feeling of having a hand on the back of
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (06:42)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (07:03)
my neck kind of pushing me this way and that way. But it can be a wonderful connector. It's amazing that we can have this conversation and that you and I can meet because of something like this. Because I posted something on Substack and you've arranged a call for your podcast. That's fascinating. It does have the power to connect and also I think we just have to be really mindful of how we interact with them to get more of the good and less of the bad.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:28)
Yeah,
I mean, that's the goal. And I don't want to presume too much, but I'm thinking, Derek, you're probably millennial ish. Maybe is that a fair guess? OK, so and I'm a little older. I'm Gen X, young Gen X, I like to say, but still Gen X. I grew up in a world where I distinctly remember a life before the Internet and a life after the Internet. remember drinking from the garden hose. All that they say about us Gen Xers is true. Like we were fair old children running wild, but we had an experience of life.
Derek Beyer (07:35)
Sure.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:55)
that was very different and millennials were the beginning, think, of formative years, feeling much more tech adjacent, at least if not reliant. And now I worry for my child who's not even Gen Z, but Gen Alpha, where there is no other understanding of reality beyond this heavy usage and dependency on technology. So I'm curious just with your age and where you're kind of at.
Were you feeling like a nostalgia feeling? Were you longing for a life that you remembered before this sort of feeling of, oh, I'm getting too dependent? Or was it like you didn't really know a different world, but because you write and read a lot of, you know, sort of sci-fi, utopian, that kind of thing, was it more of a dreaming of a world that you didn't really know that could exist? I'm just curious about your own experience with pre-tech living.
Derek Beyer (08:41)
Yeah, absolutely. I think for my particular positioning in the timeline, I...
I did grow up with the technology, again, it was like, I think about being in middle school, being in my formative years, and it was like, I had a desktop computer and that computer could get on the internet. And that's a very different relationship that I had now. And the sort of pathway in was being like, I have an iPod, it can play music. It was, which is ultimately not such a different paradigm from having a record player or a CD player. Like it's still a device and I think
I think a lot of people in my age bracket don't just like...
I think there is some nostalgia for this time in which it was like, it's not that we dislike technology or dislike the internet inherently, but we feel like there was a beautiful moment that like, I look back on that fondly, certainly. And some part of what I have been doing here has been nostalgia driven. It has been like, have gotten, I have an iPod again, ⁓ but also I'm experiencing technology that
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (09:43)
I saw, yeah.
Derek Beyer (09:50)
Did not experience at the time but is from that time like I've been playing around with compact digital cameras lately because I tried getting into film and I like film I'm getting into photography and But film is very fussy and it's I don't have any nostalgia for it in particular It's it's cool. It's fun, but it's also like Expensive you have to get it developed sometimes a roll a whole roll just doesn't come out and Dedicated devices this is something that I went into in my piece a little bit is like
it's not just getting rid of things but sometimes it's like pulling them apart. I've seen this idea come up of like basically disarming your phone because the phone tries to be an everything device. tries to be... you're watching videos, you're recording videos, you're calling your friends, you're playing video games, you're doing absolutely everything on it and by trying to like intentionally pull out separate functions
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (10:25)
Right.
Derek Beyer (10:37)
It's like that's one less opportunity that my phone can have control over me. And even though I still have, you know, I have a smartphone, I have an iPhone, but I pulled so much out of it that it feels a lot less threatening to me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (10:50)
Well, and that's what I really loved about what you wrote and about your approach, because it feels very aligned with what I'm hoping this show does for folks. For people who are, regardless of whether it's nostalgia reasons or just like an exhaustion, overwhelm reason or whatever it is that you're feeling. And I think AI is just accelerating this for so many of us. This feeling of that disconnection or the overwhelm or the always being on, whatever that feeling is, it has you saying,
I need to reevaluate my relationship with technology. I don't think puritanical approaches work for most people, right? This idea of, then you just got to stop it all. And if you don't, you're a horrible person and you're, whatever. Like, I don't think that works for most of us. And I love that you were like, no, this is about intentionality. You know, it's about, it's about awareness first, just noticing where all of this is showing up in my life, how I'm using it, being more thoughtful and intentional. And really it's about agency, taking back some sense of control, because so many of us are just,
on this ride that feels inevitable and some of what you're talking about just like with the film, right? It is almost to a point where that's a hobby that's a very expensive hobby now where it used to be the norm and it starts to feel like inevitable that well, no, can't even go take a step back because I'm on this ride and we're past that technology. And something you said in the, I don't know if it was in your piece or when you submitted stuff to me, but you said that there isn't one inevitable future. And so you have this weird mix of tech optimism and tech.
Derek Beyer (12:11)
Yes.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (12:14)
pessimism that I think is exactly what I'm wanting with analog-ish, like acknowledging that it's like a little this weird tension that we all feel. And I just wonder like where does speculative fiction and I'm listening right now to Positive Obsession, the biography about Octavia Butler from
Susanna Morris. And it's fantastic and I love Octavia Butler. I don't read a lot of speculative fiction, but I have been reading more, especially by Black authors. And I'm just curious, how does that affect how you're thinking about the future and this like inevitability thing that I hear so many people saying with like AI, like I gotta get on because the ride's going without me.
Derek Beyer (12:42)
Yeah.
what I'm getting at with my publication a little bit and what I'm getting at with that, when I talk about utopianism, what I mean is not like, that word gets used a lot of different ways.
Sometimes it means a sort of like grand Promethean blueprint future. Certainly some of the tech people in San Francisco are that. Like you might pejoratively call them utopians in that sense, but that's not how I mean it. What I mean is that utopianism is about imagining a future. That's what Octavia Butler does. That's what Ursula K. Le Guin does. It's what Kim Stanley Robinson does. And these futures are not
they're not contradictory, they all exist at the same time, they form this sort of super image. Like everybody, if we stopped and took a moment and imagined what we think a better future looks like, they're all kind of correct or good in some way and the point is to sort of share them, to have this convergence.
And I think, I mean, the opposite of things being inevitable is like, actually, what I love about science fiction and speculative fiction is that it is, it shows the contingency of things. That actually, quite the opposite, everything is not inevitable. That everything is a product of certain decisions and certain forces. And that every piece of science fiction, I think that the base definition of it is, or speculative fiction, is that it changes just one thing a little bit and then sees how it plays out differently.
And that is, at base, its contingency. It's an old argument, like, do we live in Brave New World or do we live in 1984? And I would say to people, like, we all live in some collage future of every science fiction writers, I mean, the good ones, or people who got some part of it right. But we also live in Philip K. Dick's future. Like, everything is, there is surveillance, there is...
propaganda, is also entertainment, is also numbing, there is also the distortion of reality. It's all of these things and these are all ways of understanding what we're experiencing and what we're doing and we can
When I talk about utopianism and this is the idea of other worlds catalog, it's not just a better world is possible or another world is possible, but other worlds are possible. That there are many different ways things can be and that they are and that they were. That's all a bit abstract, but that's, and I think looking at these technologies, things were different. They were different and they can be different.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (15:10)
Yeah, and I like that piece too around to some degree it is what we as individuals individually decide to do is what creates this collective new experience because I think sometimes we start to feel that sense of losing agency of I have no power here to affect any real change. So then I'm just going to why not or that kind of feeling that you it's sort of this nihilist kind of thing that we can all begin to feel and.
there maybe there's some truth to some degree of around like me individually alone is not necessarily going to stop the AI train, but us individually making different choices about our relationship with technology will necessarily affect what the future looks like. And I just wonder what you feel about AI in general, like just a, cause this was written sort of just at the beginning, I think of where AI has just become in this last year and a half, two years has just been a lot. So how are you exploring that?
Derek Beyer (15:58)
Sure.
I mean, I do just want to talk about for just a second what you said about the, I do think that I am trying to hold something between optimism and pessimism. And when people talk about, either talk, often there are two perspectives of either we, we, are powerless or the individual is all that matters. It's the sense of like,
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (16:05)
Yeah, please.
Yes.
Derek Beyer (16:21)
You know, nothing I do matters because there's a giant system somewhere that makes everything bad and therefore I'm absolved on some level. Even if you're despairing, you're absolved. I don't have to do anything because it's all broken, so good for me. Or it is...
⁓ It's all about individual choice and it's like you you can't be Addressing the system at all because it's just like did you bring your reusable grocery bag? And that's what it comes down to and I think both of those are disempowering but in their ways and they're also both true that I believe in like taking both personal and systemic action and and it's also like an an imperative for us as human beings to
Like if we want to be steadfast, which is I think something that I've identified as a virtue for utopians, like if you believe in building a better future, have to figure out how to take a breath and know like, hey, we have been doing this for thousands of years. it is all, we've been fighting the good fight and we'll keep fighting the good fight. And that means like not.
trying our best to not let it all come down on us every day because burning out makes that impossible. To your question about AI, yeah, I mean, things have changed radically. I think I was honest in that piece when I said that I was like, I don't feel like there is anything I really have to like disentangle myself from. now is, AI has worked its way into like everything. ⁓
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (17:41)
I have free thing.
Derek Beyer (17:42)
And I have a hard time talking about it even because I...
It feels like I'm talking about, we're talking about like a million different technologies that are all in different states of development and deployment and everybody has like a different understanding of them. And so we're we're like arguing about the definition. We like have different definitions of the same words and we're like, this is bad and this is good. And I am intolerant of, course, like just full blown optimism about it. There's like obviously some very real risks and like individual harms
that happen in real time with interacting with some of these technologies, and we don't know exactly what those are. And I also feel the urge to push back about some amount of alarmism because it can become very reactive and very, and it is scary. I wanna sit with that. Like it is, there are moments, I'm a writer, there are moments where it's like maybe it is gonna get rid of writing.
I don't actually think that's true, ⁓ I have felt the anxiety. I have felt that interacting with some of the products, I'm like, this is changing my brain.
But I also just want to keep in mind that again, like we have, we do have agency in these contexts. And yes, there are people making big decisions and big investments that will shape the structure. But I'm trying to be mindful about what I'm doing now in the same way that I'm being mindful about like the things that I was changing. I'm trying to be like, I think being circumspect and being introspective as you interact with these technologies and say,
how does this change my experience of the world is huge.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (19:17)
I don't want to go too in depth into your piece and like your process because people can read it. I will link to it. There's an amazing spreadsheet like you can follow all this stuff. But I will just kind of give this higher level overview, which is literally that a spreadsheet, which was massive. And you did a very like for something that the way you're talking about it feels sort of more emotional and all of that. But there was a definite logical approach to this big old spreadsheet.
Derek Beyer (19:42)
you
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (19:43)
all of
the things you're using, also getting into the feelings around them, how do they make you feel, which is some of what you're talking about, what would you maybe like to see change, what are some alternatives, what are some different ways of looking at this? And you spent, like you said, a year, and it sounds like you're still gonna be in the process and we can talk about that, but like a real year of going through sort of very deliberately, item by item, of all of these things and thinking through.
How is this serving me? How is it harming me? What do I want the relationship to look like? And just, you know, again, people can read for the tool by tool kind of thing we don't have to get into, but I would love to know more about like, just that process for you. It's a, that was a big undertaking. I think for a lot of people, they might give up pretty quickly. So what kept you going? What was the experience like? Were there times where you were like, this is too...
Derek Beyer (20:16)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (20:31)
much. I just want to hear some of your like, your own personal experiences with that process that feels daunting.
Derek Beyer (20:38)
I think I took it up in the same way that I take up. I honestly think I've benefited from being a writer where I have a practice. I'm working on a novel and I wake up before work every day and I spend like an hour and a half working on a novel. And it's that way with like, I'm also a runner. And if you're a runner, is about, it is not like go out and push yourself absolutely as hard as you can and that's where you get the results.
It is get out there very regularly and do your best and some days are gonna feel pretty bad. Some days you're gonna walk outside and you're gonna feel, it's gross. I don't wanna do this. And some days you gotta know how to let yourself off the hook in the right way. Some days you've gotta say, I'm too tired, life was too crazy today, I'm not gonna do it.
And also that is not me saying I'm done, this was stupid, I give up on it. And I think that's kind of how I took the approach with changing my relationship with technology as well, where I know that the spreadsheet looks huge and it seems like a huge undertaking, but it was really just doing a little bit of work pretty regularly. And the thing is, again, I've learned from running, I've learned from writing, is that a little bit pretty regularly adds up to a lot. And...
⁓ So I was picking away typically at like one or two things. There were weeks where it was really just like I was having fun learning about iPods. It was a hobby on some level, some of it was just fun. I've spent so much time looking at like retro gaming handhelds and digital cameras and iPods and stuff and that's just, I mean...
Did it really change my relationship with technology or was I engaging in a hobby? And then some of it was just like plugging away and I could put on a podcast. The real thing about the spreadsheet is that it allowed me to break it down into small pieces. I think the technosphere feels like one giant indivisible blob and that is why it feels so hard to act on and so immense. And I think what I am...
saying a little bit or showing in that process with that spreadsheet is actually you can sit down and like there's not an answer you don't already have because the answer is not like what's the right technology or it's just literally write down what you have write down what you think and feel about it
make a choice about what you want it to be. And you can keep revising that. I made revisions all along the way. There were things where I deeply changed my relationship to a thing and then didn't end up getting rid of it completely. You know, I really thought at the end I was like, and then I'm not going to have an iPhone when all of this is over. And I still haven't found something to replace it with. But it feels, it feels much better. And it's
Again, mean, that's the contingency is finding a way to get traction against it. And I think when you break something down into much smaller pieces, it becomes much easier to act on.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (23:24)
going back to some of that, like systemic part of this to a degree, like and reading what you were saying and what you just said there, it's so much of this is by design. Right. It's not just the addiction piece. But like you said, the fact that it becomes like the tentacles are so ingrained in all of your life that when you start picking apart, where am I using tech or what is that like reading your piece? It just made me think of my God, because then that would be connected to that. Like I started doing some of these leaps of
Derek Beyer (23:33)
Mhm.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (23:52)
If I undid this, would affect the dominoes of what it affects and how overwhelming that feels. And it has been made that way so that it does feel too overwhelming to even tackle it, right? mean, this is not nothing's not intentional,
Derek Beyer (24:03)
yeah.
No, absolutely. There are so many ways in which it becomes a dependency, right? Like think we talk certain ways about the technology that it's like, it's really addictive. It's really like you want to watch so much TikTok because TikTok is so stimulating. But there's all these other things where it's like, I bought into storing my photos on Google Photos when the first time I ran out of storage on my phone in like 2014. And I just thought, well, I'll just, this is great. It backs them up automatically.
and then I can delete them off my phone and now I have space on my phone. And then you have a lot of photos and you are paying for storage and then you have to say, I mean it's the same principle that storage lockers operate on, right? A lot of storage locker facilities are like, there's a low entry fee to put your stuff in a storage locker here. And then in three months, oops, we raised the rates. And three months after that, we've raised the rates and things keep getting more expensive but all of your stuff is sitting there and...
They are counting on the inertia, are counting on it being, I mean, it can't be repeated enough that these, really big companies, the Facebooks of the world are hiring the top psychology grads, the people who would be designing slot machines and casinos to make them hyper stimulating. And it just is, you know, it is like pulling weeds sometimes. ⁓
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (25:26)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (25:27)
It doesn't stop it, much like there's no way to stop getting email completely, but there are victories to be had, and I think it changes dynamics.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (25:36)
and that's where this idea of breaking it down slowly but surely and you walk through that you talk about like this is this is not an overnight endeavor, It's gonna be a process and one that you will probably continue to have to do again now AI in the ways that it's showing up and you know, technology keeps evolving and they keep finding ways to kind of try to get the hooks into you and so having to continue to reevaluate. I'm wondering for you what was most surprising in your journey of disconnection?
Derek Beyer (26:03)
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think I was surprised...
actually how it isn't different afterwards. when I think about how you feel about the technosphere or whatever word we want to use for it, it feels like it is.
it's very, its presence is very noticeable and its absence is definitely more pleasant. I can remember how it felt then and I know how it feels now and it's very different. And I notice it most of all when I talk to other people and I hear what their experience of it is and I go, I remember that. It did feel like that. But mostly it is the absence of that feeling. It's like the absence of hunger doesn't feel like anything necessarily, right? Like full might feel like something, but a lot of times it's just
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (26:42)
Yeah.
Derek Beyer (26:45)
like I'm not I'm just not hungry and there is a level on which there is just an absence but that that feels good I don't feel like I think I don't necessarily think I would have thought that I'd feel like a monk or I would feel enlightened before because of course human beings existed for millions of years without these you know widgets and doodads but I it just feels it just feels normal it just feels and and
And I mean, yeah, to your point, it is about, this was ⁓ a year of intervention and it is slowing down now. am like, I have very recently, I think a huge milestone for me was I do not need Gmail anymore. I am out. I can log in to everything with something else. I am not getting emails to that account that I care about. And that was a lot ⁓ of work.
And I am now, but the thing becomes then, how do you continue to evaluate it as stuff is new? Because it's easier to get off of it when it's new and when it's fresh in your life. And you can be noticing in real time, I think we were naive. Like as a millennial coming up with it, you're like, there's this new app that orders a car to you and that's great. And there will certainly be no negative consequences to a world that has like on-demand food delivery and all of that stuff.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:00)
strangers showing
up to pick you up in their car, what could go wrong?
Derek Beyer (28:04)
Yeah, what
could go wrong? And now as I encounter new technologies, think we are, I think we're less naive and can better evaluate that stuff in real time.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:15)
I mean, I do feel like that's been happening for a while for a lot of people. We've been sort of doing that. And I just really, don't know, again, the timing of the show for me, it is, I really have felt in this last year-ish or more with this rise in AI tools and just the prevalence showing up in everything. mean, even places where you think, why do I need AI in this space? It's everywhere. And I do think that has more more people adopting more of that skepticism that maybe in the past wasn't as...
Derek Beyer (28:40)
Mm-hmm.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (28:41)
as sharp as it should have been perhaps, where we were just sort of like, it's fun, it's exciting, it's helpful. I mean, they do a great job of framing things this way so that you are like, well, of course, why wouldn't I need this tool? Why wouldn't I want this thing? You also, though, you you're still getting email. You're still emailing. You're just not using email. So some of this is about choosing. And you talk about that in the piece, too. It's like choosing where you do and don't want to like who you do and don't want to give your money to, your attention to those sorts of things. So it's not about
Derek Beyer (28:57)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (29:09)
completely unplugging, but being mindful also about who you're supporting because our attention, our dollars, those are our ways of supporting things. But also, you still work in tech. You said you like tech, like you like doodads and widgets and fun things. Obviously, you have the iPad. No, the I've forgotten. my gosh, look how old I am now. I've forgotten what they're called. iPod. There it is. You your iPod and you're playing with that. But how are you scratching that itch for yourself now?
Derek Beyer (29:21)
Yeah.
Yes!
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (29:36)
that maybe is different than how you scratched your sort of tech part of yourself in years past.
Derek Beyer (29:42)
Yeah, I mean, I do find that it is...
One of the problems that I've encountered with like wrestling with this stuff over the years is that if you manage to get rid of something the batter fills the pan like that attention goes somewhere else you delete Instagram and then you're spending a lot of time on Facebook and you delete Facebook and you're spending a lot of time on YouTube and that that happens I mean it turns out that like I don't like suddenly feel like somebody who never wants to look at the internet I But I do feel like I'm spending my time in better places And I you know, I I spend more time on sub stack which I think the by
virtue of the fact that people there are interested in reading text that is more than a few sentences long or writing text that is more than a few sentences long is helpful. So there's that and I do work in, I would say I work in civic tech because I actually come from the civic side. I studied political science, I have worked in government and
And part of it is that I do believe, I think the reason I work in it is because I do believe that some of this technology can be good. Sometimes the answer is none technology. I often want to say to people like, the best way, I as a civic tech person, the best way to improve a service sometimes is to hire another person to work behind that desk and answer the phones. Sometimes that's the answer. But there are also a lot of, I do important accessibility work in that.
So yeah, I don't believe, I think a lot about the fact that I just don't think.
the answer is ever or could be go back. There is no such thing as go back. there is no, even if I'm very nostalgic for my childhood, there are things about it that are beautiful that I think we should try and maintain. We should try and like maintain this memory about what was great about that, this feeling of space and presence. And some of these choices that I'm making can give us some of that back. That's what I love about like digital cameras is that's one less reason to pull out my phone or interact with it. so you,
Yeah, I'm scratching it by honestly, I mean, just having hobbies of delving into other stuff that I find interesting. you know, it's funny, being bored is a very old problem and just sometimes learning to be bored again.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (31:48)
Which is hard because we are so trained not to be I talked to my kid about boredom being a gift because Creativity comes out of boredom and when we don't give ourselves any boredom What do we think's gonna happen to our creativity muscles? Which brings me to the last thing which is your novel because I saw that you're nearly finished You've talked a little bit about it. Is there anything you can share with us about what your novels about?
Derek Beyer (32:09)
Yeah, absolutely. It's still in protean form. I don't talk about it a whole lot. I've been working on it for years. it is...
It has a lot to do with my publication, actually, because I would say that if I come off as like an optimistic person, it is only because I have grappled so much with despair, honestly. I used to really, I still love, I think it was George Carlin said, if you scratch a cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist. And I think I have been a disappointed idealist. I've been a cynic for a lot of my life. And this book ends up being
about that. I would say that it's a book about disappointed idealism. is about, it is a retro science fiction novel in sort of the vein of a classic James Bond villain of
Somebody who was once a utopian and was knocked down by the world a few too many times and it was actually writing the book that really changed a lot of things for me and like got me to this place because honestly I was some months into writing it I realized I was like I relate to a lot of the problems that this person is going through and working through those questions.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (33:13)
and
Derek Beyer (33:17)
got me to a place where I had a much healthier relationship to them and I was able to see a lot more possibility. I think the most encouraging thing that I could say is that truly we do not, the most hopeful thing I know is that we do not know what the future holds. That there are a lot of unknown unknowns that we do not know what will be done next year or invented or changed or worked on and there are so many possibilities.
human beings are actually not very good at prediction and that means that there are some unseen things that could be good surprises and we truly do not know what they will be or when they will come and there is like that is where hope and possibility lies.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (33:54)
Yeah.
I used to not want to read speculative fiction or sci-fi or that kind of thing because it scared me or would depress me a lot of it. And now, especially because I've been reading more Black authors like Sky Full of Elephants, I really enjoyed like I've been reading more of this. And it's actually that has been providing me some hope because I realized through that, like if we can dream a different world, we can create a different world. And there can be some real optimism inside of that.
Derek Beyer (34:23)
when you mentioned Octavia Butler earlier, it's funny because I think about which authors I think of as my sort of utopian forebears. And Octavia Butler is kind of known for her dystopian work. Most Octavia Butler novels, things are not going great for the people involved in it. But I actually think that Octavia Butler is a bit of a utopian. Sometimes people mention Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents as like, this is a terrible, this is America's future, this is the dystopia.
But that is a book about a very bad future in which the main characters are dreaming of a much better future. That like, even as things are really bad, the main characters are like, I am not absorbing the fact that the world is very bad and that is not going to stop me from dreaming of the day in which things are much better. And I think that's actually the real thing buried in there.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (35:04)
Yes.
And
yes, I think about community and collective care and because that's what actually moves us forward. And I think those with the most marginalized voices are the folks who best understand that.
We could get into a lot of that that's not related to this necessarily, but I've just really been enjoying that work because it has been helping me start to find some optimism in humanity and in our ability as humans to function differently and dream up new worlds. Anyway, thank you for sharing about your book. Thank you for sharing about your disconnection and everything you've been doing and hopefully now reconnection. Are you feeling more connected?
Derek Beyer (35:39)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Especially on, I think, I mean, to go back to things that were surprising to me, the sort of just like very immediate reality. Like a very immediate thing anybody can do is just go for a walk outside and don't and just don't bring your phone. A walk outside without your phone is a wonderful thing to just like look at trees and hear birds and the way in which our senses directly make contact with reality is the big thing that all the screens don't let us do.
and that can be done in 10 minutes.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (36:09)
Well, I was gonna end by asking you what's one thing you want people to do this week. So there it is, go out and walk without a device and see what, just see what you see and what you hear and all of that. Thank you, Derek, so much for being here. How can people learn more about you, connect with you?
Derek Beyer (36:16)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, the substacks the big one. Again, that's Otherworlds catalog. You can visit it at Otherworldscatalog.com. And yeah, I mean, I will be hopefully publishing the novel at some point soon, if you want to hear about that, the substacks probably the best place to find me.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (36:35)
Perfect.
thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Derek Beyer (36:38)
Yeah, thank you so much.
