My favorite tech trend so far this year has nothing to do with artificial intelligence.
It’s the cool girls making their own “cyberdecks” — strange, DIY and highly customizable personal computers that explicitly reject AI. They look like props from a cyberpunk movie, usually built on a Raspberry Pi base and spare parts. As one tinkerer, whose “mermaid cyberdeck” videos have drawn tens of millions of views, puts it: “What we should do with cyberdecks is gatekeep them from AI and megacorp.”
The cyberdeck boom follows the iPod as another Gen Z hardware obsession. Many of the models now being hunted online were released before their new owners were born. Refurbished tech site Back Market said that iPod sales jumped almost 50% last year, while eBay says “iPod” was searched more than 1,300 times an hour.
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