Technology

I think this is all very person-dependent. I have found 3d printing resources/tips/experiences from others. I have gotten into building my own antennas after learning about VNAs via social media. I have gotten into SDRs, ham radio, electronics thanks to shtuff on social media. I have learned a few new 3d modeling tricks via social media. I have found a few suggestions for go packages, etc. I could keep going for years about what I have run into online.

I have found the world's knowledge available at my fingertips. Others are finding tiktok dances. I think this is a matter of who you are and what you prefer to do than "the bad tech" making people somehow bad. You will find that people through history have fit a similar distribution of people who are into learning and people who just want to be entertained.

I agree on all of this, but were books different (except for surveillance)?

• Back then those authors that wrote books with messaging supporting the owner class received loads of coverage from their media andtherefore spread their propaganda far and wide. While the average Joe could write whatever they want, nobody was able to see it (until now with social media), because printing is timeconsuming and expensive, and marketing even more so.
• Back then fascists spread their ideas in books, today they do on social media. In both cases supported by the money of the 1%.
• Back then only politically active people were surveilled, now it is everyone. This is a big change.
• Back then entertainment was inexpensive, now it is basically free.

Also that's not really the point the article is making. They say that simply reading books makes you smarter. As if people read physics books in their freetime back then. No, they just read entertaining stories, and now they stream entertaining stories. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Back then Oil made you part of the owner class, now it's IT and the owning of marketplaces.

Personally i think we would live in a utopia if people consumed cave-art and stories by storytellers rather than this book-slop which is easy to mass produce and distribute.

That's sarcasm. Don't worry.

Democracy

There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that's like indirect representation.
However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.

Then there is the issue of corruption, which is generally legal under the guise of lobbying.

And because all democracies that i know of have secrecy laws, they can't be considered democratic.

Liberty

With the liberal part: A person can only be free if they feel safe. But in all countries (that i know) there is a large part of the population that works most/all of their day because they are (rigtfully) afraid they can't pay for their daily needs if they don't. And they don't like their job.
So how can any society claim to be free, if a (large) part of their population is not controlled by their ambitions, but by their fears? If you dislike your job, but do it anyways because if you don't you die, that's not freedom. That's the definition of slavery.

Am i OK?

Absolutely not. Here a list of problems that could (all) be solved by diverting some funds from the world's militaries:

1. Startvation
2. Malnutrition
3. Homelessness
4. Climate Change
5. Wage Slavery fixed by UBI/Scary Communism

And here a list of things that can be fixed literally for a negative cost. People would be richer while fixing the following problems:

1. Mass animal torture fixed by Veganism.
2. War
3. Any disease, physiological or mental including aging fixed by Antinatalism

And these are just a few of the worst problems. All of them fixable. Many for free.

Knowing that all of the problems are easily fixable, and the people around me are not only not working on them, but actually making things worse by dedicating their live to emitting CO2 (SUVs, Meat-Eating), supporting (Wage-)Slavery (Being against UBI), and making more babies so they may suffer under these manufactured conditions makes me sad (and angry).

I would say the first step in fixing these problems is realizing that things are absolutely not OK. That earth is closer to hell than to paradise. The next step is realizing that no sane person can (or should be) OK under these conditions. And the final step is implementing a solution, ideally with the help of others.

Is it a representative democracy with secrecy laws? Then no.

There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that’s like indirect representation. However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.