Megatechzilla & Hyperfoci

We used to live in a mindset that new tech was emerging that could ease our burdens and improve our lives. Terms like "disruption" were used in positive context. Along the way our economy grew into a direction where what were small tech companies became behemoths that in 2025 represented 92% of our GDP growth (https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/data-centers-gdp-growth-zero-first-half-2025-jason-furman-harvard-economist/). Why then does the glitter of this golden age of tech feel like a mirage? Nearly every day we are sold the new and glorious AI by news agencies and social media, yet life is getting more difficult and more disconnected with AI acting as a megaphone of disinformation.

Without delving into the perilous economics of it all, I choose to reject this megatechzilla inasmuch as it is possible to do today. I have worked in tech for nearly 30 years and have daily been able to sense the evolution in progress, and today the glitter has a lingering fecal odor. With computers and audio technology being so central to my life, how do I proceed?

I am recently diagnosed AuDHD and I say this unashamedly. I am blessed with the ability to keep steady work and fully function in society, albeit as a lifelong struggle. Linux has been a hyperfocus since I first discovered it in 1999. Linux on the desktop has evolved in ways I've never expected to become quite usable in 2026. Therefore to retreat from the AI slop we are all being forcefed by Microsoft & Apple, one way I can save my own mind is to finally move to linux for good.

I transitioned to OSX (now MacOS) when 10.2 Jaguar was released in 2002. At the time, a PowerBook was the most amenable way to get into making music by computer with CoreAudio while simultaneously having access to my newly discovered linux tools via the Fink project and the Darwin UNIX based terminal. I have now lived through both builds of Rosetta, and as awful as Rosetta 1 was in terms of usabilty, so awful was Rosetta 2 not in usability but in the fact that we are left with the awful design decisions of modern MacOS.

I have actually transitioned fully to Ubuntu once before (2012-2013) but was unsatisfied with the music making options at the time. With Bitwig Studio and the CLAP standard, and with the forward thinking of developers like VCV I think this time it will stick. And this time I will record it here to maybe help other like minded people. I invite you to come along for the journey.

P.S. If you have not read the book Enshittification by Cory Doctorow I highly recommend it. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/