Desparately trying to silence critics, because the only thing they’ve ever actually been successful at is tricking investors into giving them money. Their “product” is PR. They sell hopes and dreams to credulous venture capitalists.
It feels like we’re at the endgame of the corporate mentality in technology. “Tech” used to imply expertise, craft, and a commitment to quality; now it’s mostly a buzzword for raising capital and PR.
Real progress these days mostly comes from enthusiasts and small teams, not hierarchical, ego-driven organisations that prioritise the share price over their human talent. Not “startup bros” racing to get another Node.js app funded, but the freaks and weirdoes staying up until sunrise reading obscure 1990s whitepapers and translating them into Python to fix a random Blender ticket because they actually care.
I often wonder what would happen if we funded those passionate weirdoes who just want to help. Pay them an income to go around the neighbourhood, setting up cloud backups for everyone, organising systems, and building solutions that actually work. This rigid adherence to a classist, centralised society built around wealth isn’t just obscene and inhuman, it’s making us dumber and blocking the kinds of solutions that should already exist.
I often wonder what would happen if we funded those passionate weirdoes who just want to help.
I have a similar thought, what life might be like if we overfunded our education system instead of overfunding the military. There are plenty of brilliant people being born in the poorest zip codes every day, too hungry to think or focus in school and destined for the prison pipeline due to poverty that’s outside of their control.
“Tech” used to imply expertise, craft, and a commitment to quality
Tech has never implied that. Even 40 years ago, tech had implied crafty but janky solutions that few people understood but got implemented because it was better than the alternative.
I get what you’re saying, and you’re right that a lot of early tech was janky. But it was also built to solve problems for the user, not to self destruct within 5 years so they buy another one. Engineers and experts in companies used to have more sway when they put their hand up, now there are professionally designed mechanisms in companies to silence and undermine them.
I grew up in the 1990s, and there genuinely was a shared belief that technology could make life better, that systems could become more humane, more efficient, and more empowering over time. Even when the solutions were rough, they were often built by people who cared deeply about understanding the problem and improving things incrementally. Not to boost their share price or go viral on social media.
What feels different now isn’t that the tech is imperfect, but that large parts of the tech industry have deprioritised understanding and craftsmanship in favour of growth, optics, and financial engineering. The jank used to come from constraints; today it often comes from misaligned incentives. I am weary of attending ‘tech’ events because the focus isn’t science, innovation or improving peoples lives - it’s about fundraising and networking.
If you read ‘Bad Blood’, Elizabeth Holmes literally did this same thing when Theranos’ grift was being exposed, up to and including having suspected whistleblowers stalked and intimidated.
Desparately trying to silence critics, because the only thing they’ve ever actually been successful at is tricking investors into giving them money. Their “product” is PR. They sell hopes and dreams to credulous venture capitalists.
It feels like we’re at the endgame of the corporate mentality in technology. “Tech” used to imply expertise, craft, and a commitment to quality; now it’s mostly a buzzword for raising capital and PR.
Real progress these days mostly comes from enthusiasts and small teams, not hierarchical, ego-driven organisations that prioritise the share price over their human talent. Not “startup bros” racing to get another Node.js app funded, but the freaks and weirdoes staying up until sunrise reading obscure 1990s whitepapers and translating them into Python to fix a random Blender ticket because they actually care.
I often wonder what would happen if we funded those passionate weirdoes who just want to help. Pay them an income to go around the neighbourhood, setting up cloud backups for everyone, organising systems, and building solutions that actually work. This rigid adherence to a classist, centralised society built around wealth isn’t just obscene and inhuman, it’s making us dumber and blocking the kinds of solutions that should already exist.
I have a similar thought, what life might be like if we overfunded our education system instead of overfunding the military. There are plenty of brilliant people being born in the poorest zip codes every day, too hungry to think or focus in school and destined for the prison pipeline due to poverty that’s outside of their control.
Tech has never implied that. Even 40 years ago, tech had implied crafty but janky solutions that few people understood but got implemented because it was better than the alternative.
I get what you’re saying, and you’re right that a lot of early tech was janky. But it was also built to solve problems for the user, not to self destruct within 5 years so they buy another one. Engineers and experts in companies used to have more sway when they put their hand up, now there are professionally designed mechanisms in companies to silence and undermine them.
I grew up in the 1990s, and there genuinely was a shared belief that technology could make life better, that systems could become more humane, more efficient, and more empowering over time. Even when the solutions were rough, they were often built by people who cared deeply about understanding the problem and improving things incrementally. Not to boost their share price or go viral on social media.
What feels different now isn’t that the tech is imperfect, but that large parts of the tech industry have deprioritised understanding and craftsmanship in favour of growth, optics, and financial engineering. The jank used to come from constraints; today it often comes from misaligned incentives. I am weary of attending ‘tech’ events because the focus isn’t science, innovation or improving peoples lives - it’s about fundraising and networking.
If you read ‘Bad Blood’, Elizabeth Holmes literally did this same thing when Theranos’ grift was being exposed, up to and including having suspected whistleblowers stalked and intimidated.