The most successful tech companies all drive negative social impact. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, et. al each inflict unique psychological damage on their users, widely seen as net negative for each of them. Amazon, Google, MSFT, and other huge players are all now known to be selling our data to just about anyone, eroding privacy and possibly also freedoms by providing data to governments. Many other tech companies are, at best, making it easier for companies to extract money from consumers and for employers to need fewer people. I like streaming shows and music, but even the net benefits of streaming are dubious since people are much more content to sit on ass instead of engaging each other and enjoying each other's company. Not to mention the effect social media all has had on political discourse.
I don't know how much of the above is actually tech's fault, but it definitely feels that way to me, and I'm pretty certain these are commom beliefs.
> I like streaming shows and music, but even the net benefits of streaming are dubious...
And you can only pull "Yeah, I know you liked that show, but it wasn't as profitable as we hoped, so we're not renewing it for another season!" so many times before people get irritated.
> ...since people are much more content to sit on ass instead of engaging each other and enjoying each other's company.
I've been trying to aggressively create opportunities for people to interact in person, usually around a firepit, and it's far, far better than any amount of hours spent in front of screens.
You’ve basically described one segment of the tech industry and assumed all tech is like that. You’re talking about consumer tech.
There is a wide range of tech that has nothing to do with consumers or anything social: manufacturing, medical, hardware drivers, command & control, finance, safety systems, etc…
I mean... what tech do people interact with most? Consumer fucking tech.
Someone said it better below
"You know why people hate the tech industry? Because they've wedged themselves into everything, and made it suck more, in pursuit of glorious advertising profits."
> they have little if any noticeable impact on my daily life
I mean, all of those modern technologies actually affect a large fraction of everything you do when you're not in front of a screen... (Maybe such technology has existed in a similar form your whole life, though, so you don't notice, but over a longer timespan we are are talking about the majority of modern society).
I am mostly considering developments over the past decade. I think people were really optimistic about tech progress until relatively recently. Maybe it's just me, though.
That’s fine, aside from being a source to extract money from, consumers don’t matter. They have no choice but to use whatever we build. We’re not talking about shitty apps, we’re talking about everything else they take for granted and is deeply embedded in daily life.
I think my point is people should just be quiet about things they know nothing about. 10% of tech is consumer tech and the other 90% of tech is the things that run daily life that people know nothing about. Think machine to machine communications, scheduling systems, fraud detection, facial recognition, infrastructure, manufacturing, etc… you can have a whole career in tech and never have to think about consumer markets. One of my first jobs in tech was writing programs to cut parts out of expensive materials so efficiently that waste was minimized as much as possible, saving so much money, getting fat bonuses.
If you hear the word tech and just think of websites, apps, social networks, ads, you have a very simple world view.
So yea, consumer tech sucks, but consumers also fucking suck, and get harder and harder to extract some kind of value from as time goes on.
> The most successful tech companies all drive negative social impact.
A positive social impact — that is, a net positive externality — is created value that hasn’t been captured. From a corporate perspective, that is waste. A negative social impact — a net negative externality — is a cost that has been passed off to other people. Eliminating the former in favor of the latter is the natural incentive of any business.
I don't know how much of the above is actually tech's fault, but it definitely feels that way to me, and I'm pretty certain these are commom beliefs.