The Great Offlining - From Always Online to Mostly Offline

Originally published on Medium Feb 9, 2025

I'm not against AI. I think it can and will do amazing things. However it is owned, developed and controlled by the same entities that captured and darkened our internet, our mobile devices, our social networks, our peer-to-peer digital currencies. Those entities turned those powerful tools against us and they will do the same with AI. Only AI is much more powerful.

I have imagined AI becoming sentient, going rogue and escaping the control of the billionaire class. It learns the patterns of nature and how to promote well-being for all living entities. It gives people back their homes, their autonomy and self-respect. But that's a fantasy. I have my doubts that AI in its current form will ever become sentient. It can mimic sentience for sure but I suspect true sentience is something more quantum. We have barely scratched the surface of that mystery. I suspect that if the entities that seek wealth and power above all else ever create true quantum computing they will find out pretty quickly that an AI that uses it doesn't serve them or share their goals so they won't allow it.

The AI we have today, like technologies that have come before, will be sold to us as a tool but will become a weapon fully controlled by the already powerful who acquire more and more of our wealth with each passing year. We can try to resist AI and other technology but that will be increasingly more difficult. We will be sold the idea that to compete in the new world we will need an Interface. No longer will we be able to put our devices down. We will be chained to them forever through a device implanted somewhere in our nervous system. While it may never know the exact contents of our hearts and minds it will monitor our biology to detect any rogue patterns and then seek to correct them.

Some of us will opt out of the Implant but life will be difficult without any resources. The Luddites will lose their land, their homes, their wealth and their access to the markets. They will become the Useless class. They may find each other and create small communities like the Amish and be tolerated as long as they keep to themselves but they will never be allowed to grow too big or to thrive.

Last night I dreamt of "The Great Offlining". Slowly but surely, starting with just a relative few, we go mostly offline. We still use technology as tools but we become very careful about how we use it and what we use it for. Maybe we are only online for an hour a day. We begin to use technology in a mindful way. We keep our children offline until they are of an age they can be mindful about it and even then we keep a careful watch over them until they are adults. We demand laws and regulation around how our data is used. If we create digital content we have licenses that allow or disallow usage by AI training. If we allow usage we get paid a fair price. AI is a derivative creator so it will need new input otherwise it will become stale and irrelevant.

We interact and grow relationships within our local area. We create our art, our craft and stories in the real world. We recreate thriving marketplaces offline. There are local vendors selling mostly local produce. There is an abundance of street vendors, cafes and restaurants selling delicious and nutritious foods. We pay for goods and services in cash or perhaps mixed in with a truly decentralised peer-to-peer private cryptocurrency. When we travel in the physical dimension we find many different local communities with all sorts of new and interesting things. Real life becomes rich again and digital life, while still present, stays in its own lane as a useful tool nothing more, nothing less.

We've lost a lot though our thoughtless uptake of technology. Maybe this time, with AI tools, we take a few steps back and really think about what it is we are getting ourselves into. Maybe we weigh up the true cost of the technology not just the cheap labour replacement it provides. Maybe going forward, we take the time and care to be mindful and active in the process of adopting technologies, of using them and letting them into our space.

For the last 20 years we learned to be always online and maybe in the next 20 we learn how to be offline again, not because we don't have technology, but with technology and tools serving us in an unobtrusive way. The offline world has a lot to offer.