I have been using Librem 5 as my phone for roughly 1 year.
We live in the era of ChatGPT. The technology corporations want us to believe that the future of computing is that the computers will think for us. It’s been a good 10,000 years for the advancement of our species, but we hit the end of the line. Now instead, you can buy an iPhone with a neural processing unit in the hopes that its neurons out-think you. Or you can buy a Copilot Surface Microsoft laptop, designed to take screenshots/video of you while you use the desktop, so that you can supply the recording to the AI and ask it to interpret what you were doing yesterday with its neuronal superior recall of what the technology was doing, and how it worked. Almost everybody is getting really upset about their political leaders, or the divide in their favorite hobby, but if you ask them why they’re truly upset none of it makes any sense. It’s almost as if they were upset because someone pre-determined to make them upset, learned how to get there, and the only thing that mattered to them was the outcome.
The way to train AI software is to declare the mathematical goal state, and allow the machine to learn how to achieve the state on its own. This eliminates the time consuming portion of software development where a human would input, “if this, then that” ruling. So, if my understanding of this process is correct, the idea that everybody in society was ruthlessly turned against each other and mad over nothing that made any sense would be entirely consistent with the idea that someone trained an AI to achieve a particular goal state, and it learned how to make the people feel this way, with reckless disregard for the fine details of what happened to get them there.
They say that deaf people have a much higher likelihood to develop Alzheimer’s and become senile. When I live as a Librem 5 user, I wonder if I lead myself in a similar direction. This is especially true of what the Librem 5 stands for, more than the device itself. If you use the non-free internet and the non-free software, those systems will happily barrage your mind with a thousand voices – some of them surely artificial – so that you can a constant input stream. If you instead only choose to engage with folks who use open protocols, or who choose freedomware over evil to the extent that they can learn how – often there are so many fewer people making this choice, that you are in a sense disconnected, perhaps like a deaf person in contrast to the evolving world of the non-free.
What is a phone? Why do I need this kind of device? When I came into this world, by the age of 7 there was a day I was given a device called GameBoy and I was told that this is mine. I still have it. It still functions. Inside it, I could go on digital adventures. Using connector cables, I went on digital adventures with friends. It has a hardware switch that turns the device on and off.
When I was handed an Android device 12 years later, the world was a different place. My digital life had been lived through computers with keyboards. “Smart phones” were a joke to me. I was not interested in a device that “kind of” did what I already knew how to do with a computer, but didn’t really totally succeed. Other people said I should have one, and that was how it came to be. I upgraded it to make the “HEY, LISTEN!” sound from the fairies in the old Zelda video games whenever it got a notification, because this was an accurate expression of how I felt about the device.
Of course, as my knowledge increased, I came to realize that:
- Without making it expressly clear to me at first, the device recorded a history of every place it had every been and sent this history to an advertising company instead of keeping it local to the device
- There was no way to gain “root” access to the device, save for a program (made in China?) to hack the device with some kind of exploit
- Most files and folders on the device were inaccessible to the user. The folders that were accessible, in some cases, would upload their contents automatically to the servers of an advertising company for analysis, and post back results of their analysis at times as if it were cute
I could go on, but over time it became evident that these devices were designed expressly to abuse me. In society today, a lot of people would say that when I use that terminology I’m being political or pedantic about free software or something like that. But, I don’t really think so. If it walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If it treats me like this device is not mine then that is probably what its creators actually believe.
For all that I can tell, a Librem 5 despite all its faults, is expressly intended to be mine in the manner that makes sense to me, like what we see in a GameBoy. This morning I sent 3 texts with the Chatty app. One of them failed to send. I don’t care. I use a cell provider that gives me a backup line that I can check with a computer. I sent a screenshot of the 3 messages to the other person, to fill them in on what I meant to say.
The Librem 5 has a home directory of folders and files. I can put any files in this directory that I want, with any name. And I have. Sometimes, I pick stupid names or put files in the “wrong” places. But no matter where I put them, they are never uploaded to an advertising company for analysis.
When I press the call button to call people, it almost always works. I made a few calls the past few weeks, and they all worked. I received an incoming call, and my friend didn’t turn off their loud music and I couldn’t hear the call. It might’ve been the music, or it might’ve been a Librem 5 bug. I do not know. I don’t care.
I don’t want to be abused anymore. Android stays in a faraday cage to block radio signals. I get to sleep at night.
What is a phone? The Librem 5 reminds me that I would rather use a laptop if I want a mobile device, in most cases. I might enjoy switching to a laptop with a SIM card, but I guess at this point society does not permit the construction or sale of SIM-compatible modems that only run freedomware, or something like that. It seems like so many people got abused that the system of free society is probably on its last legs, similar to how the tech companies are pushing to end the value of human minds and have those on their last legs too.
But I enjoy to try. I’ve managed to configure a system where I can continue to do my job despite being a Librem 5 user. I didn’t do this by convincing my employer to write software specifically for a Librem 5. I did this by navigating how to do everything needed of me for work using a laptop/PC.
I found myself talking to someone new at a table at a social event. He was talking about society today and phones, and how phones like his were made in foreign countries in buildings with suicide nets to catch the employees when they try to suicide on the job – since being the people who make the iPhones and the Androids is the kind of job that makes humans suicidal, I guess.
I whipped out my Librem 5 USA and said, actually, nobody committed suicide while making my phone because it was made in United States.
I think he didn’t expect that. I guess most people assume that in order to get a phone, somewhere along the way, somebody needs to have a building with a suicide net. He started asking where it was from.