Electronic technologies are seeking to escape my control — and they are largely succeeding!

This must stop.

Take Ello, about which I have written. I fooled around for a bit, but it has no privacy controls of any kind: everything is public to everyone, nobody can be blocked, etc. I understand that the service is new and still under development, but I won’t be back until I can control my environment (if then).

And then there’s this: I subscribe to some magazines on iOS, because with my aging eyes — I’ve mentioned this before — I really like being able to adjust the type size. (Most print magazines are close to unreadable for me now, unless I take off my glasses and hold them inches from my face, which is not the most comfortable way to read.) But the iOS 8 update broke a number of magazines in Apple’s Newsstand, including Scientific American, and while some of them have been fixed, SciAm has been both inactive and silent. I have paid for their magazines, but I can’t read them; and so far they have not responded to my emails.

These are just reminders that, for all the convenience that online and digital life provides, and while we use a great deal, we own very little indeed. I admire Comixology’s recent move to enable PDF or CBZ downloads of comics I’ve purchased from them — “from participating publishers.” But Marvel and DC (among others) aren’t participating.

So I guess I’d better get used to reading magazines and comics a few inches from my de-spectacled face. And I should rededicate myself to owning my turf.