You Built This Too
You Built This Too
When technology forgot humanity, and you helped it happen.
Once, I built the web myself. Now, I can’t log into my own life.
In the middle of a national crisis, when everything feels uncertain, I tried to access my Social Security account. I couldn’t. Why? Because it was tied to a phone I no longer have. And because the system—designed by people who preach security but don’t comprehend lived reality—won’t allow for a human moment like changing a number.
This didn’t start with the current administration, though they’ve made it worse. This has happened before. And it’s not just me. Anyone whose life doesn’t follow the neat, trackable arc of digital behavior—anyone who switches phones, resets passwords, forgets a username, loses a device—is treated not like a person… but like a risk.
They call it security, but it’s not about protecting you. It’s about maintaining control over you — and calling it protection so you’ll stop asking questions.
The system doesn’t ask what you need. It asks if you still fit. And if you don’t? It locks you out.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I’ve been known to conspire with a theory or two — and you can wear that truth proudly. I’m not anti-technology. I’m just someone who helped build the early web, and who now finds herself locked out of the very infrastructure we were told would empower us.
The Cost of Convenience
I’ve never wanted to be tagged. Or tracked. I’ve always valued privacy — not because I had something to hide, but because I had something to protect: myself, my autonomy, my dignity.
But technology doesn’t ask what you want. It assumes. It takes. And now it owns more of me than I ever gave it permission to.
We were told this was convenience. Put your phone number here. Link your account. Enable notifications. Allow location access. And at first, it was easy to believe the lie. That tech was helping. That it was giving us control.
But now, my phone number is my passport. My location is my leash. My data is their asset. And my consent? It was implied. Then forgotten.
Once upon a time, when I was a wizard, we believed technology would set us free. We built with joy. We coded with curiosity. We saw possibility.
But freedom was the bait. Now we are slaves to systems we didn’t vote for and can’t opt out of. And some of us? We’re damned unwilling.
What began as choice is now coercion. What was once empowering is now required. And if you don’t comply — if you don’t upgrade, authenticate, geolocate — you’re locked out of your own life.
This is not progress. It’s digital feudalism.
And here’s the thing no one tells you: it’s incompatible with aging.
Your reflexes slow. Your memory slips. Your tolerance for 12-digit passwords evaporates. You miss one update, one code, one verification loop, and suddenly you're a ghost in your own system.
People say “you’ll understand when you’re older.” And honestly? I hope they do. Because if they don't — if they never figure out what they've set in motion — then one day they're going to find out exactly what it means to fuck around. And they won’t like the finding.
Discounted Surrender of Freedom
Not long ago, my insurance company offered me a lower rate — if I downloaded their app.
I didn’t want to. But the indignities of being poor often leave little room for principle. So I acquiesced.
And just like that, another invasion began. I installed the app, and with it came permission to be tracked. Not just while driving. Not just while using the service. Always.
It didn’t work, of course — not in the way they intended. Oh, it tracked me just fine. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t out joyriding. I was home, trying to get by.
And yet, the app insisted:
“You must keep it on.” “You must allow tracking.” “You must comply — or else.”
And here’s the kicker: apparently, it never occurred to them that I don’t drive my phone. When I took a trip in an Uber, the app evaluated the Uber driver’s performance as my own. Hard braking? My fault. Speeding? Me again. Phone usage while driving? Yep, I'm such a clever back seat driver.
It was absurd. But it wasn’t funny. Because I needed that discount. And so, I kept being watched.
The Cage You Built
So here’s the thing, kids:
Beneath all the glitter — the connectivity, the influencers, the dopamine hits from people you don’t know and probably wouldn’t like if you met them offline — there’s a menace.
And while you comfort yourselves with the lie that the big bad boomers ruined your world... Let’s be honest.
You did this.
These intrusions, these digital chains you now wear proudly — they’re not the legacy of your elders. You can carry them now, but with time they will drag you to the ground. They’re the tools you built.
Because somewhere along the way, we — society — handed you the keys. You knew the tech. But you didn’t know anything about life. About dignity. About restraint. About freedom.
You understood user interfaces. You never learned what it meant to respect a user’s humanity.
And so you built the cage.
Not for us. But for everyone. Including yourselves.
And let’s not pretend it’s all of you, or that you all even had the tools to build it. Here's the central lie: your generation lays claim to technology as if you authored it — but most of you are just end users. You didn’t build it. You bought it. And yet, you defend it as if you coded every line. I hold you responsible, not because you're all programmers, but because you took ownership of a machine you didn’t understand — and in doing so, you helped turn it loose on the rest of us.
One day, you’ll wake up and realize you’re no longer the architect, real or pretend. You’re the occupant.
The Missing Expertise
And no — it’s not just an age thing. Though largely, it is.
What it really is… is an expertise thing.
See, there are people who don’t have a background in science. They’re not fluent in math or code. They’re not lawyers. Or engineers. Or policy analysts.
And you know what? They shouldn't pretend to be.
But they have something else. Something real. Something that matters in a way that can’t be measured in metrics or modeled in an app.
And now that same disregard is bleeding into politics — a belief that youthful energy is more valuable than seasoned judgment. That experience is baggage, and age disqualifies. But leading a country isn’t a hackathon. Passion isn’t a substitute for principle. Wisdom tells you that you have time, time to gain experience.
With age — if you’re paying attention — comes a kind of expertise in how life actually works. The rhythms. The regrets. The returns.
And no — Mark Zuckerberg didn’t have that when he decided to connect the world. And judging by the digital wreckage we now live in, he still doesn’t.
He doesn’t understand that sometimes, connection is a violation. That not everyone wants to be reachable. That sometimes, the most humane thing technology can do is leave us alone.
Maybe he’ll learn that someday. But I’m not holding my breath.
Because when you build tools without wisdom, what you’re really building… is a system that learns nothing and teaches even less.
And that’s the problem with the tech bros — not just the young ones, either. The immature ones. The Musks and the Zuckerbergs. The ones with no reverence for what came before them, no hesitation about doing something just to see if it can be done. Not once stopping to ask what happens after.
You know the motto: Move fast and break things. Well, what they broke was us.
I remember when Google Maps first launched. You could enter someone’s phone number and it would show you their home address. Anyone with common sense was horrified. I had to call a Google office in London to get my number removed. The tech support rep was irritated — why should they take it down? It was the future. Someone else would do it eventually.
Well, the Present must have sat them down and explained a few things. Like how any stalker with a number could now find their victim — thanks, Google.
I bring this up because skill is not the same as wisdom. And yet we’ve handed the world over to the skilled and they are very unwise indeed.
Not a Warning. A Memory.
So here I am, no longer a wizard. Just a citizen navigating a system that forgot what it’s like to be human. I don’t want revenge. I want accountability. I want technology that respects the dignity of age, of privacy, of difference. I want space to be alone, to not be mined, monitored, or monetized. I want the future we were promised — not the one we were sold. And if that makes me irrelevant, so be it.
I used to be a wizard. But this future holds no promise — not for me, and not for you.
You may not see it yet. But you will.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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