Okay thanks, though I wish you hadn't used AI. I'm fiercely against AI, which is why I voiced my disappointment that a cause I stand behind is obfuscated by pseudo-radical word salad.
Anyway I don't believe OP wrote the manifesto themselves, so my criticism is most likely not arriving at the right address anyways.
This particular OP rather than suffering from mania is suspiciously bot-like. It's the second account I encounter in a few days whose posts and comments seem ever so slightly off - in this case it's just the completely random stuff they post and an uncanny and distanced way of commenting.
I'm a bit dismayed that I now have to make an effort to distinguish real people from bots and that if I block those I find suspicious it includes the risk of blocking some real people who are just having a weird way of expressing themselves.
The problem with most manifestos is that every second word is more than 10 characters long. Why? Can you not write what you want to say in as few words as possible, and in a way it even can be understood by people whose native language is not English? Come on, give me an ELI5 please, I want to fight AI but I don't want to have to wade through word salad to do so.
I feel you. I'm older, and some years ago I decided to get off facebook. All the people I loosely connect with in my region are on there, events get announced there, my hobby groups are there. I felt very superior to all those who kept using fascist social media, and told myself I was better off without it. I also became very isolated from other humans and spent 24/7 with the same person and with my animals. It was great for a while, but ultimately I went back to using the blasted site. I believe it can be healthy to spend time away from the algorithm especially when one is a little too hooked, I don't think it's good to isolate from others forever and get too hung up over how and where most people like to interact.
I'd say I now use the site with more self awareness - when I realize that the algorithm is fucking with me I get off. I also make an effort of engaging with people I like in real life, through shared interests and activities. I still hate facebook with a passion and to not feel too bad about using it I post a lot of political stuff to try and radicalize my friends on there.
I'd say don't suffer too much for your idea of social media purity. If it helps you connect with others, use it. If you feel you are too hooked, go touch grass.
I built a solar tracking system with light sensors for a solar cooker. It worked beautifully on a cloudless day but sometimes got confused when there were some clouds. Some weeks later I realized that my glorious invention was trying to find something we know the position of at any time during the day. Considering the time and money spent and how smart I had felt for building that monstrosity made me feel very dumb afterwards.
Search for tech coops, quite a few seem to be popping up recently. I'm not directly in tech and still haven't found who I'd really love to work for, so I can't help much, but it's a lovely question and I'm curious about other people's answers!
Water is a limited resource and even tech like desalination doesn't solve anything if you have nowhere to put all the salt. As long as our tech includes BS like water-guzzling data centers to run AI for creating stupid fake cat videos there's not much hope. We're monkeys with technology and some species wiser than us should probably take our monkey toys away because all we use them for is causing more damage.
Humans are nice to each other as long as they can afford it. Limit their access to clean water and food and they will turn into bloodthirsty monsters, like any animal will do.
Our current treatment for such types of depression are essentially still in the stone ages. Throw something at it, see what happens, adjust as needed.
I know, and I guess watching a loved one being slowly destroyed by the trial and error that is 'modern' medication made me want to never consider it no matter how bad i felt - so this AI thing seems to be an even more dangerous trial and error method, because it seems even more invasive and less tested than the medication that's available now. On the other hand I've found self medication with plant medicine (yes, it's weed, weed, and more weed, but also quite a few other herbs I collect myself) quite efficient and safe. I've managed to keep myself going for a few bad years and have now reached the point where I went off it cold turkey - something my loved one never managed to do once he was hooked onto the meds. All done on my own terms, no doctor pretending they know better than me, giving myself the time I needed. So that's for a true stone age method, and given the fact our bodies are still working the same way as they did in the stone age I feel it might be safer than any novelty they have come up with in the last decades. Probably that's a controversial take on this, and I don't expect this to work for everybody (you need to have lots of time to be able to afford to rest and relax and have access to unlimited amounts of plant medicine).
Horror might be more entertaining than depression, but the sheer idea of letting some techbro implant shit in my brain is so ridiculous, I'd probably try DIY lobotomy before I consider the AI option.
As someone who is literally living where others go on holidays while depressed let me tell you my depression is very much a response to the world being a rotting shithole. I am not sad because my life sucks but because so many others are suffering and I feel powerless to change it. The narrative of 'chemical imbalance' is a very reductive and misleading one.
The feeling of powerlessness and disconnect also points to the cure I find for myself. Instead of implanting experimental BS inventions into my brain I try to be a force of connection, community and hope for others. There is very few things I can do as a single tiny person, but in these very small things lies the power of change for the better.
I was forced by my idiot ex husband to go to a wedding of family I didn't even know while one of our horses was at home dying of colic. Spent the day crying, was stared at disapprovingly by strangers and ended up eating some pink dessert with surprise salmonella. Returned home to a dead horse and three days throwing up with diarrhea.
I hate weddings and only have been to two including my own, so that would leave my own as the best one, getting married to the above mentioned idiot. Just us, our kid and my parents at the civil registry, then burger king. Fuck weddings, for real. Best day of my life my arse - I've always thought how awful that sounds because it means it only gets worse from there (and it did).
I could still mention a third wedding I refused to go to because idiot husband was too drunk to drive us there safely. Had to flee with the kid and hide at a friend's place for a week to escape his rage (shouldn't have returned, but was talked into going back by that 'friend' and the idiot).
Weddings trigger the shit out of me to the point where I make sure to not have friends who'd ever consider having a wedding and inviting me to it. I'm now proudly non-monogamous and happy among people who don't have to make a big expensive thing around pretending they want to be together forever.
Wet curtains, and if that's not enough a wet towel on the head (not your home, I know, but something to remember when your brain threatens to overheat and you've got no energy left to pursue another solution.
I know, that's why it really bugs me. Makes me want to go offline to not have to deal with this problem at all.