I Spent a Year Disconnecting from Tech: Here's What Happened

In this episode, you'll hear from Derek Beyer — writer, utopian thinker, and creator of the Substack newsletter Otherworlds Catalog — about what actually happened when he spent a full year deliberately auditing and dismantling his relationship with technology. Derek didn't go off the grid. He made a spreadsheet. And what emerged was something far more honest and sustainable than any detox challenge: a tool-by-tool reckoning with which technologies were serving him and which had quietly taken the wheel. You'll hear about the difference between feeling disconnected from life and being over-connected to tech, why dedicated devices like digital cameras and iPods are making a comeback, what utopian thinking has to do with reclaiming your attention, and how a little bit of traction — applied regularly — adds up to radical change. Topics Covered: • Why "disconnected" was Derek's word of the year — and what he discovered it actually meant: Derek set a New Year's theme around connection, only to realize that what was making him feel most disconnected was technology itself — the constant mediation of reality through apps and platforms. • The technology entanglement problem: Even people who want to quit can't fully escape — soccer leagues use apps, kids' activities require check-ins, boarding passes live on your phone. Derek argues the goal isn't perfection but reclaiming agency. • The spreadsheet method for tech auditing: Derek built a massive spreadsheet cataloging every technology in his life, including how it made him feel, what he wished were different, and what alternatives existed — then worked through it slowly, one or two items at a time, for a full year. • Dedicated devices as a form of resistance: Pulling individual functions out of the smartphone — a separate camera, an iPod for music — reduces the phone's opportunities to control your attention. It's not nostalgia; it's deliberate disarmament. • The surprising feeling of disconnecting: Derek expected enlightenment. What he found was mostly just... the absence of a bad feeling. Like not being hungry — it doesn't feel like much, but it's a lot better than the alternative. • Utopian thinking and speculative fiction as tools for imagining different futures: Derek pushes back on technological inevitability. Science fiction, he argues, doesn't predict one future — it reveals how contingent everything is. Things were different. They can be different again. • The individual vs. systemic action trap: Neither "nothing I do matters" nor "it's all individual choices" is the full picture. Derek holds both — personal action and systemic awareness — as necessary and non-contradictory. • AI and the challenge of staying intentional with new technologies: Derek is neither a booster nor an alarmist, but does think AI is different — it's already entangled in everything, and the real work is applying the same circumspect, introspective evaluation to it that he brought to the rest of his tech audit. • Why boredom is actually the point: Creativity, presence, and genuine connection require unstructured space. Learning to be bored again — without reaching for a device — is not a regression. It's the practice. • The novel, disappointed idealism, and where real hope lives: Derek has been working on a retro sci-fi novel about a one-time utopian beaten down by the world. Writing it changed him — and brought him to a place where he genuinely believes that the most hopeful thing we have is the simple fact that we do not know what the future holds. Resources Mentioned: • "How I Disconnected from Tech in 2025":   / how-i-disconnected-from-tech-in-2025   • "Positive Obsession" by Susanna Morris: https://amzn.to/4oq7YlS • "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler: https://amzn.to/4gfLguD • "Sky Full of Elephants" by Cebo Campbell: https://amzn.to/442A9xJ Connect with Derek Beyer: • Substack: otherworldscatalog.com 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/