As corporations take over more and more of our culture, especially our technological culture, I have more thinking and managing to do about m relationship with technology, now the foundation of much of my work. There are many issues relating to technology and social media for me to sort out and ponder – boundaries, privacy, addiction, obsessive communications, hostility, money,  among others – but for now, I’m dealing with rise of the technological eco-system – how corporations like Apple, Google, Amazon are not simply selling products and services, but drawing us into purchasing systems that are increasingly expensive, complex and manipulative.

Amazon sells Kindles and discounted books on them, but they also ties us to the company’s vast and growing system of products and free and cheap deliveries.

We become dependent now just on technology itself, but on these eco-systems, which are just another name for monopolies. Not too long ago our government used to try and curb monopolies but corporate America has invaded the political and legal system as well as our personal lives. Our government routinely terrorizes publishers and independent bookstores into never colluding with one another, but nobody seems to care that Amazon is very close to monopolizing publishing. It is unimaginable to think of the federal government challenging Amazon.

For all of my creative life, I have used and loved Apple products. I think Steve Jobs was one of the great minds of my time, one of the great and positive influences on my life, for all of his intensity and cruelty. His company is a corporation, not a noble cause, but he seemed to me a ferocious advocate of people like me, not technically minded but drawn deeply into technology for creative reasons. His customer service was fabled and hardly ever replicated. When I called them, they made it right. I’ve written every book and blog post and magazine article I’ve ever published on an Apple Computer. I know better than to romanticize or personalize corporations but I always felt Apple was my partner, helping me navigate this difficult and confusing world, helping me do my writing, take and store my photos, write my books, publish my blog and podcasts.

Now, I’m getting uneasy. Apple is vast, and they have a hand in my entire creative life. This week I realized that my Ipad 2 was getting funky, and I gather this happens now to these devices, their processors are not fast enough to handle the rapidly changing and extensive interfaces of the Internet. I researched this. I was considering a smaller tablet, I looked at the Ipad mini and also at the new Google Nexus 7, getting a lot of good attention. I talked at length with an Apple sales person and  she persuaded me I needed a new Ipad, not a smaller tablet. Following her counsel, I ordered a regular Ipad without cellular capabilities – WI-FI is almost everywhere – and with a relatively small amount of memory, since I don’t store videos or play games. I did not want to spend a thousand dollars.

But I found out if I didn’t spend a thousand dollars, I couldn’t get the Ipad I needed.

When the Ipad came, it was the wrong size, I couldn’t transfer my stuff from the old one. I spent hours on the phone with tech support before we figured out they had sold me the wrong tablet. The nearest Apple store is an hour and a half away, and there are no appointments available for at least a week. The tech support rep said I would need to go there and spend a few hundred dollars more on extra memory.  I didn’t feel as if I needed to spend an afternoon driving around for a mistake I didn’t make.  In the meantime, I had purchased extra space in the cloud to try and save my content and transfer it.

I tried to cancel the order, but I can’t reach the right department until Monday, and because I couldn’t remember the security answers I entered 20 years ago, I couldn’t cancel the cloud storage purchases either. It has never been so frustrating or complex for me to deal with Apple, they are doing so many things it is almost impossible for me or them to really keep up. So I made what is a big decision for me. I don’t want to be entirely dependent on Apple, and the company seems to me to be getting big and unwieldy, growing well beyond me. Perhaps I always was alone and just didn’t get it, but I know I am on my own now.

I am naive this way, I think it’s the little boy always wanting support, even when there is none. I learn the same lesson over and over again, you have to be your own support, your own customer service.

Steve Jobs was not like other CEO’s, perhaps the reason Apple was so inventive and successful. He didn’t listen to bureaucrats or lawyers. He always sat on the tech support desk one morning each week and talked to callers like me, and now I increasingly feel I am just talking to another company out for money, this is also an example of my own fuzzy thinking.  Jobs was manic about making his products easy to use for creatives and about supporting them.

But Apple is a corporation, and has always been, what am I thinking?  I’ll have to get on the phone again, but I will return the new Ipad and today I bought a new Nexus 7. It costs a little over $200 (as opposed to the $1,000 I was about to spend on the Ipad,  the additional memory I would need, insurance and Apple care, case, and the cloud storage. It’s supposed to be easy on the eye and great for e-mail and Web browsing and social media management, just what I need. I have a good friend who is dying for an Ipad. She’ll get mine.

The Nexus mini-tablet is the first piece of technology I have ever owned related to computing that was not from Apple. And the first time I have not listened to Apple advice.

I decided I need some liberation technology. I found myself reaching for the Ipad a little too often, doing things I don’t really need or want to do. I want to understand Google and it’s different operating system, I want to liberate myself from the grip of any one corporate system. I understand there is no longer any such thing as privacy, but I do want some independence. It sounds like a small decision, but it is a big one for me. I am managing a lot of technology now, and it is not natural to me, something I am learning  in order to change and evolve as a writer.  Apple and my creative life have been so entwined, I feel I’m cutting lost a bit of my creative soul, it feels a bit like a divorce, even though I have plenty of Apple products and will keep them.  I’ll get the Lexus this week, I’ll let you know how it goes.

I have to say this decision makes me sad, this was something I trusted for so long, it is hard to let go of the idea. Corporations are not built for trust. I suppose you just have to buy local for that.