So be the contrarian who does those things we "don't do" anymore. Teach your kids, if you have any, to do those things. Teach them to observe the family at a restaurant, all staring at their individual phones, while yours remain safely in the car or shut off in your pocket.
> Who gathers around the piano to sing along with your one cousin who can play all the standards, anymore?
For the past 6 months or so, the lifegroup we host (mid-week discussion group associated with our church) does exactly that as part of our evenings - we typically sing through three hymns, with piano, on our path between dinner, discussion, and an open ended firepit time that often goes well into the late hours. And let me tell you, people enjoy belting out the standards (my wife generally picks one well known, one lesser known, and one "You've probably never seen this one before!"), scraping the dust off how to read multipart music, etc!
If the direction of tech is to dehumanize us and remove all that humans enjoy, then screw that! Do what humans enjoy instead!
Of course the individual can simply do those things anyway. Some like-minded groups may form, even.
Over the population, statistics is king, though. We don't, as individual actors, will our way into a better tomorrow when our environment changes to make that harder—not in large numbers. "So just ignore all those circumstances and pressures and do it!" does not work, in general. Larger forces and trends dominate.
You're right, but not being in the position of a god-king where I can change those larger trends, the best I've found is to model and demonstrate that the "consumer tech profitable defaults" aren't the only way to live life, and rather loudly so.
I work in tech (deep weeds), and most people I interact with are quite aware that I do not like what we've done with it, and that I try to keep its influence on my personal life down - with plenty of handy ways on hand to suggest people try out, or solutions to "But how can you possibly XYZ?"
Having grown up before smartphones were a thing, I do recall how we used to do things, and most of those methods still work.
Yeah, your approach is of course the only one available to the individual. What else can you do? Literally nothing. That's the only option to improve one's own experience—"just do it". I just expect the population-level effects to be... troubling. A kind of mass existential crisis. Not that there's much I can do about that, though, you're right.
> Who gathers around the piano to sing along with your one cousin who can play all the standards, anymore?
For the past 6 months or so, the lifegroup we host (mid-week discussion group associated with our church) does exactly that as part of our evenings - we typically sing through three hymns, with piano, on our path between dinner, discussion, and an open ended firepit time that often goes well into the late hours. And let me tell you, people enjoy belting out the standards (my wife generally picks one well known, one lesser known, and one "You've probably never seen this one before!"), scraping the dust off how to read multipart music, etc!
If the direction of tech is to dehumanize us and remove all that humans enjoy, then screw that! Do what humans enjoy instead!