The digital world has become a hellhole! Time to change it!

Now vs then

The digital world has become a nightmare, controlled by multi billion dollar businesses and lawmakers who hardly have used the internet for anything other than watching adult movies. Combined with a surprisingly indifference in the general public an unholy trinity has formed to create a digital hellhole.

In the earliest days of internet there were almost no regulations and it was more akin to the wild west. But given the fact, that mostly people from an academic background used it at all, it was more or less a toy for the geeks. It took several years until bigger companies were using the internet to generate income. Before that, material was generally exchanged, copied and modified where ever possible and mostly nobody cared that it happened.

Only later regulations were put into place to further help companies protect their products like music, programs and content of all sorts etc.

Draconian Times

While it is clear, that pirating games, programs etc. can hurt the producers by depriving them of their income, there can not be a debate, that the regulations made, go way too far.

Downloading a music album worth a few dollars could easily lead to paying a few thousand dollars when sued by the wrong person.

See: https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/

250.000 Dollars or even jail time for a minor crime like torrenting a music file is beyond ridiculous.

The problem is that such laws are not an exception but the rule:

• Patent trolling has become a major issue, even for bigger companies, the ghost they summoned now has returned to haunt them.
• Information privacy laws are almost exclusively tailored to big companies, meaning they have the possibilities to meet the requirements while it is hard to keep track of all rules associated for every smaller company, which can result in getting sued into bankruptcy
• In European countries it is absolutely needed to have an imprint on blogs, websites etc. otherwise one can get sued into oblivion. Meaning, there is no privacy for those who might need it. Creating an anonymous blog with no imprint can get one into really big trouble. Think of people reporting on how they escaped an abusive relationship, violent household etc. By using an imprint , this person puts himself into danger.
  
• The GDPR meant to protect site visitors from data collecting services has not achieved anything other than making visiting a website more annoying than anything. While smaller companies are sometimes scarred to create a basic website, because again they can get sued into oblivion if they make a mistake. Bigger companies hire special personnel to overcome any risks. At the same time every website asks you to allow cookies and more often than not one is so annoyed to click trough the "No I only want to accept the following cookies..." dialogue, that one clicks "Accept all", because of sheer frustration.
• Copyright laws are made by people who can hardly use a typewriter and so it comes, that even the usage of Memes can get one into trouble. The well known Nyan-cat, a regular shitpost was even removed out of the community driven project Minetest over copyright concerns.

Furthermore a toxic culture on the internet has established and people seem quite okay with the status quo:

• Spamdexing is now good practice for influencers and companies. By manipulating search engines people receive results filtered by the criteria 'Who screams the loudest', not what is best for them.
• Notification pop-ups are asking kindly if they are allowed to hijack ones browser to automatically open tabs to their respective website.
• Click baiting -everywhere! Whether one opens YouTube or even well established news website. The click bait is everywhere. If one wants to be a successful creator on Youtube it is the way to go. But even mainstream media does nothing to prevent click bait advertisements on their websites or worse- even create click bait on their own to attract readers.
  

I don´t care just make me pay!

While many of these issues are directly connected with the fact, that the wrong demographic (politicians are usually around the retirement age) decides over these issues, some are directly linked to corruption and lobbying.

Of course corruption and lobbying are not exclusively a problem of the digital landscape, the solution for this can only be total transparency.

But aside from these factors it is also astounding how little resistance the general public forms against thinning out their rights and privacy.

When the NSA spy affair became public it was a topic for a time but these days, the public is more concerned about China using an App, which one voluntarily installs, to spy on people all over the planet.

Instead of just not using the App, people argue about cancelling it in certain countries.

It is almost as if a general Nihilism has conquered peoples mind. "The companies already got your data, so why even bother?" seems the general attitude.

Apparently there have not been enough bad examples for people to realize the consequence of such a behavior.

Furthermore it seems people are quite comfortable with the situation as it is and do not really care if it worsens.

Around the 2000's it was general practice to buy a software and then one could use this software as long as it did run on a machine and mostly it did for a very long time.

These days big tech companies only offer services based upon a subscription model, rarely are those cheap. Additionally one has to accept questionable Terms of Use, which allow the company to collect ones data to earn even more money.

As if it is not enough, Operating systems for which one paid good money is spamming the user with advertisement. This is normally considered Adware and every serious IT-serviceman would abandon such software for his client but nowadays they do not have a choice. Those companies have become an industry standard and therefore are more less allowed to do whatever they want and everybody just accepts this.

Every now and then, entities such as the EU demand those big companies to pay fines for their questionable business practice. But considering the amounts of money the biggest tech companies are earning each year it is hardly even a fraction of a peanut for them. After paying a certain fine and fixing minor legal issues, it is of course: Business as usual for them and it seems like nobody cares.

Installing an operating system these days, involves a lot of declining every offer to evade ones privacy. One has even resort to not so obvious tricks and almost hacks in order not to get forced into creating special accounts for a given service even though one paid money for a product.

When a user has declined all offers to get spied on or spammed with advertisements a famous operating system asks one the exact same question after every major software update. Knowing full well, that those updates are more or less mandatory.

The same goes with DLC's. Formerly people purchased a video game and they owned it with access to all its content but these days a person has to pay the price several times to unlock all features. To get all fighters unlocked in a popular game series one has to pay additional money. To unlock the whole game it is not enough to just buy the game once, but twice or even many more times.

Overall the products one pays for in our current times do not fully belong to the customer anymore. Losing ones autonomy over the product causes higher costs for the consumer over the long term and less freedom of course.

Imagine buying a car and before one can take a ride an email account has to be registered to drive the car. Not only that, the car company would collect all personal data and frequently spam ones inbox with how great the next gen car is. Furthermore a more economic driving mode is only available if one purchases the Green Driving DLC, which of course is a subscription model. The car company additionally only provides software updates for 5 years, meaning if the car suddenly stops driving in 6 years it is the customers fault for not buying the newest car.

But this is exactly the scenario the public is heading into.

What now?

What can be done or better: What should be done?

 

Putting on the balaclava and take action (militant please!) is the only correct answer!

As every war has many different front lines it is needed to address them separately and with individual approaches.

The biggest enemy is corruption and incompetence. Both can only be addressed by forcing transparency, by voting and protesting.

Laws and regulations have to be simplified, no one has the time to read trough 1000 pages on how to manage cookies.

Direct action has to be taken too of course: Spending as little money as possible for proprietary programs. Support open source and try to encourage people to do the same.

Public services pay insane amounts of licensing fees to big tech companies for using a product, that exists as a free counterpart and is maintained by people all around the planet. If a feature is not existent in the free counterpart it is much more economical to pay a handful of developers create a suitable add-on.

The amount of tax payer money that goes into software, that could be replaced by Open-Source software like LibreOffice's Write is obscene and it is only one application.

Resist:

Cut away what one does not need and outsource as much as possible into the offline world. Social networks are often a blight upon humanity. Sure, there are cases where they shine but in most cases they are of no use at all.

People can have friends without using a digital social network service after all.

Do not buy games, using DLC's or other questionable practices. A world without video games is possible and most likely better. If one has to play video games, search for open source material, in this way, one can acquire hard skills such as programming too, since many are meant to be modded!

Do not buy nor support games which include pay2win or loot mechanics!

Do not support content creators using misleading titles or click bait. there are often better less known sources with more sophisticated content!

Always remember: If the content is so great, why does it rely on aggressive marketing strategies? It is no coincidence, the most questionable Gurus make the most extreme statements.

Visit websites which are funded by the public. For most services people already pay taxes. Using the information available by for example the NPR or the their respective counterpart in other countries (at least more or less democratic ones) is often quite sufficient in getting the information needed.

Bookmarking websites, which align with ones personal standards is also important. Not a dime should go into the hands of those making the Internet such an unbearable place.

Be militant: 

Break those, trying to break you! Put on the ad blocker of your choice when browsing!

Use a free and open Browser such as Firefox/Iceweasel! 

Use an operating system that does not spy on its user or spam one with advertisements! Most modern Linux operating systems are very easy to use these days and contrary to their proprietary counterparts run smoothly on older hardware.

(I was writing most of this article on a used Dell Latitude E6520, which was at this point over 11 years old. OS: Debian Bullseye).

Install add-ons to your web browser, that automatically decline most, if not all cookies! Or at the very least rendering them more or less useless by deleting them automatically.

See: https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete

Using alternative search machines is something a lot of people can apply to force a change and put an end to the senseless evasion of privacy.

Most notably:

https://www.startpage.com/?t=dark

https://www.ecosia.org/

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa

https://metager.de/

DIY:

'Be the change you want to see in this world!' -Mahatma Ghandi.

Building up a landscape tailored for the people by the people is what the Internet needs. This can be achieved by using p2p services like torrents or open content.

Modifying existing material to improve it. There are many software projects that provide one with 98% of what one needs, the last 2% are meant to be added by the people.

Everybody can do something:

• Writing a blog with useful advice
• Help with translating software projects, blogs etc.
• Add to an open library of sounds, articles, pictures etc.
• Respectfully engage in forums instead of outright evil platforms meant to spread disinformation and hatred
• Modifying and improving existing open source programs

Since Hardware is strongly connected to the software and the way the digital world is build, it is also crucial to take physical devices into account.

After all, much of the hardware is designed around the idea only to use it together with their respective software and terms of services.

Instead of relying on services of others, create your own custom made solutions. The internet is full of Raspberry projects, which cost you some time and patience, a network cable and a Raspberry Pi.

Here is an example of a NAS based on a good old Raspberry: https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/nas-box-raspberry-pi-tutorial/

Careful Buying:

One man's trash is another man's treasure. These words could not be more true these days. Buy used hardware instead of buying the newest stuff. Buying old games instead of buying the latest DLC loaded AAA game which require you to buy the newest hardware is also an option one should consider.

This way a lot of money can be saved. Also extending the lifespan of an item is easier on the limited resources of our planet than producing a new iteration of a given smartphone every few months for example.

Interestingly enough more and more Refurbish stores have been rising and a hefty discount can be made if one intends to buy a device then.

Make it last: A moment of silence please for all the smartphones, that went into the trash because their display broke...ok, thank you!

Simply using a protective shell for the smartphone does the trick.

Also it is helpful to make sure, the bought hardware is designed to be repaired more or less easily. Many smartphones make it nearly impossible to even change the battery without breaking everything. Some companies however providing simple solutions for such minor issues. Of course such devices should always be preferred. 

 

Further resources:

https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/

Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint: Ambitious Experiment or Overcomplicated Health Gamble?

What is Blueprint and Bryan Johnson all about?

Bryan Johnson, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, aims to defy aging and live as long as possible in optimal health. Therefore, he created (along with a team of doctors and experts) a protocol he calls Blueprint, which he openly shares with everyone on the internet. This includes everything, from his diet, workouts to various measurements he does on an almost daily basis.

It may seem that his success in maintaining healthy biomarkers validates the program. While it is safe to assume his protocol hasn´t harmed him yet and most likely was responsible for achieving his perfect test results it is also impossible to say which part of his protocol had an impact on his health and which ones didn´t.

Key issues with the program

While the general guidelines of the program stand on solid scientific ground (daily sport, healthy recipes, enough sleep, no alcohol etc.), Blueprint also has some fundamental issues. For example, the protocol consists of countless supplements, many of which have little to no evidence to have an effect on the human body and others are not needed within that diet. Furthermore, there are general concerns on how the protocol works on a basic level:

1. Some change in biomarkers happen over time. If I identify a deficiency in a given nutrient and decide to supplement it, my lack of nutrients is potentially already recovering from a small dietary change I applied some weeks ago but since the body can only absorb so much of nutrient X, further supplementation is useless. But since I am now supplementing X my next blood test shows no more lack of nutrient X. I decide to keep supplement X on my daily Todo list yet despite there is no need to do so. Same probably also applies to the Blueprint when one considers that it consists of handful of pills everyday.
   

2. Many processes in our body are interconnected with each other. For example, Iron and Vitamin C. Combining these two together means, that more Iron will be absorbed by the body while the overall amount of Iron that has been digested stayed the same (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism). So, eating something rich in Vitamin C with your meal of choice might drastically increase the amount of Iron in your body (with potentially even harmful consequences in form of an Iron overload). Furthermore, there are also nutrients which decrease the body´s ability to absorb certain nutrients. Just thinking about the effects, we know of would be way too complicated for many people and that leaves out the stuff we don´t know. On top of that things like stress can also increase demand for specific nutrients.

3. Our body is a self-regulating system in many ways and adding a supplement is often just without effect. A good example is water soluble vitamins which your body just gets rid of by peeing. Adding Vitamin C in a somewhat normal diet will have no effect on most people other than costing money.

4. Bryan Johnson has a sample size of exactly one: Himself. Since we know there are genetic differences in humans in terms of nutritional requirements and not only that. Sex, age, body composition, activity level and many more factors are influencing what your body needs and even how it reacts to any given substance. Creatine being one example where there are clear responders and such that don´t respond at all.

5. The absorption of nutrients and various supplements is poorly understood in the human body and therefore just adding them into one´s diet doesn´t mean it´s a good idea. In case of Rapamycin (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus) this means the substance maybe have a positive effect on your body but there are some underlying mechanisms we yet don´t fully understand. In the best-case scenario one would waste money, worst case an isolated supplement like that could also pose a harm for the body.

6. Mice aren´t people: Bryan Johnson supplements almost all available vitamins there are and additionally experimental drugs that show promise in mice studies. Mice studies are usually just the beginning of the research. The human body is different in a myriad of ways to that of the mice.  Just because mice which had been fed nuts and seeds tend to live longer than the ones receiving 5% of their daily calories in form of Tofu doesn´t mean one shouldn´t eat Tofu and instead resort to a nut and seed-based diet. The same applies to medication of all sorts. Unless the supplement of choice isn´t tested in humans it is generally not advised to just add given supplement.

7. The hype isn´t your friend: Bryan Johnson seems to be very interested in experimental treatments (like stem cell treatments and gene editing) yet serious research takes years and often decades to reach conclusions. Just trying them out and see if they damage your body isn´t a healthy choice exactly and one that doesn´t benefit anyone or anything. What is needed to determine any use are careful and expensive studies not a single person just experimenting with a dosage.

8. Too many variables in general: Bryan takes a lot of supplements (Almost all vitamins, two garlic supplements, Lithium, Glucosamine Sulphate just to name a few of his very long list). It is impossible to determine which supplement had which influence on his body, because the complexity of his program is too great. For example, supplementing Lecithin is said to have a positive impact on the MTOR-pathway. Below is a schematic of said mechanism. This is not to say, that MTOR won´t be fully understood at some point but it illustrates how complex the mechanisms in our body are and they are all interconnected and have complex feedback mechanisms. Tinkering with substances which aren´t fully understood might not be the best idea.  

Credit: Charles Betz (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Unnecessary Risks                  

Bryan´s personal benchmark in terms of his fitness is somewhat risky too. He prefers to measure his strength for example by doing one repetition maximum with rather bad form like bench pressing with his butt leaving the bench, putting himself under a lot of unnecessary risk of injury. Note that torn muscles never come back to their old form and function, once the damage is done. A better alternative is to use things like a 5-repititon maximum and calculate one´s maximum strength.

In general Bryan Johnson also seems to enjoy a high-risk high-reward strategy by incorporating questionable treatments as well, which might have positive or negative outcomes for his body over long periods of time. One of these examples is an experimental stem cell treatment, which we simply do not know enough of at this point (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem-cell_therapy)

There is not only an underlying risk that things could go south very fast because of this kind of treatment it is also undermining the efforts of blueprint in two ways:

1. Almost no person will be able to undergo such expensive procedures and therefore it´s hardly of any use to anyone. At least for now.
2. There is almost no way to find out if any of these things had any meaningful impact. In its worst form this means he might get cancer at some point and decades later we find out that his experimental treatment most likely caused it.

In medicine a common term is called conservative therapy, which implies to use less risky, less invasive therapies to be preferred over an invasive and more risky therapy. If a bone is able to heal without applying screws and titanium, then this is the preferred option of course.

A maximalist effort

The maximalist approach might be interesting to him, since he doesn´t need to be concerned about money but for the regular, every day, normal guy it is a valid concern. Since he also sells his own products associated with that lifestyle, it could very well be a marketing strategy by combining an excessive number of supplements in order to generate a need for an unnecessarily complex product so people can´t rebuild it reasonably cheap themselves anymore.

Risk aversion is something he already happily practices by not participating in highly dangerous activities so why not leave the potentially dangerous therapies up to the scientists to study with care, money and time?

Perfectionism of a subject can consume one’s life. Bryan already has perfect biomarkers, for now it would be great to downsize again and find out what is truly necessary and what is not. Personally, I am of the opinion, he could greatly reduce the number of supplements he is taking as of now but again, this is not something I can scientifically back-up by studies but by a rough estimate, since he is often exceeding his recommended micronutrients by a lot.

This article is not to say, that Blueprint doesn´t work, quite to the contrary: Many things are in fact very healthy habits. Many first world countries would benefit greatly if everyone would incorporate the basics more rigorously into his/her lifestyle.

At the same time, it might be appropriate not to go overboard with this lifestyle as it could be rather time consuming and what good does a regiment do if the invested time potentially outweighs the years, one gets out by adhering to the blueprint protocol?

Clickbait and marketing

While Johnson shares his protocol openly, his social media promotion often uses exaggerated claims like ‘Live to 120+,’ which lack credible scientific backing and may mislead followers. Given that only one person was verified with an age over 120 years (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment), there is little to suggest the Blueprint lifestyle will lead to such an extreme lifespan. Especially when one considers that Jeanne Calment had a vastly different lifestyle and was even a smoker for most of her life.

Nobody should expect to reach an age of 120.

Additionally, some of Bryan Johnson´s endeavors like this one are questionable at the very least:

Experimental gene therapy, carries significant unknown risks.

Healthy skepticism

The premise of the Blueprint protocol is: "Don´t die!". But so far nobody even has exceeded the age of 120 since Madame Calment despite major advantages in medicine. What has improved drastically however was the average life expectancy due to covering the basics, like sanitary installation, less famine, less war (thanks to Putin and the Xi Jinping this might change), vaccination programs etc. While the amount of people who live to see their 100th birthday might be increasing, there is no observation of people becoming much older than that. Currently the oldest people are between 112 and 116 years old. But we have yet to see a person celebrating his/her 123th birthday.

While there is no law of physics limiting a person´s age there is also no guarantee humanity will be able to drastically change the ultimate age limit without resorting to cybernetics if that is even possible. Not only that, there are no mammals that live forever and animals that could in theory live forever are vastly different to us humans in every aspect (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)). While there is progress on the anti-aging front, it is slow and expensive. Ironically almost every time anyone finds an interesting drug or procedure that might dramatically increase lifespan in a given species, the result is usually that the tested organism develops cancer. This indicates there is still a long way to go before we see the first 200 year old person.

Many practitioners of longevity diets hope for scientists to come up with life extending medicine and technology that will hopefully preserve them forever but for now this is a distant hope and nothing more.

From an ethical perspective it is probably more desirable to help people not to die of easily preventable diseases than letting the richest people on this planet live forever. Especially since these are low hanging fruits and the measurements to do so are known to work, like investing in education, sewers and vaccines.

Conclusion

Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint undoubtedly promotes some valuable habits, but its complexity, reliance on experimental treatments, and marketing hype raise valid concerns. Sticking to simpler, proven health practices may ultimately be more beneficial—and less risky. While achieving immortality seems unlikely, adopting healthy habits is always a great step toward improving quality of life.

 

Further reading: https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/