alt Hacker NewsSo I totally get feeling disillusioned...tech has definitely caused harm, no question. But writing off the whole industry as just a force for bad is kinda missing the full picture. It's like only seeing the shadows and ignoring all the light.
Yeah, "surveillance capitalism" is real (though I might take issue with the terminology). So are predatory gig models and all the rest. But the same tech that powers that stuff also lets a kid in a village take a free coding class. It lets someone stuck in a war zone video call their family. It lets people in remote places talk to a doctor without traveling hours. It helps small business owners make a living without middlemen, gives a global voice to folks who used to be ignored, and helps disabled people live with more freedom.
Tech has also made a huge difference in:
- making communication and education basically free
- speeding up medical breakthroughs (including vaccines)
- Helping organize disaster relief and mutual aid
- connecting people to jobs, homes, and communities
- bringing corruption and injustice to light thanks to mass documentation
Of course there's a dark side. Every powerful system has one. But saying "this is all tech ever did" isn't clarity...it's a kind of burnout talking. Which is, of course, understandable. You're allowed to feel that.
But I don't think it's fair or illuminating to erase the very real ways this stuff has made life better for billions. It's not perfect. But better. And worth building on.
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I understand why you'd feel disillusioned if you went into the surveillance capitalism part of big tech in the USA. It's probably similar to what a lot of people will feel about the AI industry when it does to the office floor what robotic automation did the factory floor a few decades ago. I'm not sure I'm quite as optimistic about tech as you are, but I completely agree with your point on how tech is more than just silicon valley.
There is the medical tech that you mention, but there is also green energy tech, farming tech and so on. All which are areas that are improving the lives on the planet for a lot of people. Of course many of these industries are kind of hard to break into if you're a "software engineer" and not really used to working with machinery, but it's not like it's impossible and it's certainly an area where your stuff will stick around. Some of the earliest software I build for solar plant data loggers will probably live a lot longer than me.
I do think people should follow what they want to do though. I completely get wanting to try something different and I don't think the authors reasons are any worse than people who burn out because of all the pseudo-management-bullshit in our industry. You don't really see anyone questioning when someone becomes a woodworker because they're fed up with associate agile scrum it business partner managers and little boxes on a board.
People burning out and blaming the world around them is pretty common. Unfortunately, that's just not how it works. As the saying goes, the only constant in all your problems is you. The wisdom behind that is less about finger pointing and more about just figuring out that the way to address what makes you feel bad usually starts with changing or at least acknowledging yourself.
The tech industry is part of our bigger society, which for better or worse is actually not completely horrible compared to essentially all of recorded human history. By most objective standards, we're better off than ever. Most of us get to live long and not worry about starving to death, being eaten by predators, freezing to death, being killed by violence, etc. Actually we're pretty well off and reach average ages unthinkable only a few generations ago. It's been relatively peaceful in most of the world for a while despite some really ugly conflicts, the occasional genocidal maniacs, terrorists, and what not. But the bottom line is that there are many places that haven't been war zones for a relatively long time now that are prospering. Even places that we still think off as relatively poor (e.g. most of Africa).
Technology has contributed to a lot of this progress. It extends our lives, provides better quality of live, wealth, etc. And it enables people to help themselves.
It's easy to forget that most of that progress has happened in an extremely short time span. Alan Turing was only born (1912) a few years before my grand mother (1914). She passed away aged 94. That was this century. Alan Turing lived and died before most of what we currently regard as the tech sector even existed. He helped invent the modern computer but he died long before computers became widespread. Donald Knuth, one of the founders of what is modern computer science still lives and publishes books.
That's an insane amount of progress in just a couple of generations. We live in amazing times. Yes, it's not all good. But honestly if you only focus on the negatives, you are missing the point. It's mostly good despite the negatives.
I get that people burn out. Many middle aged people do. And honestly, I'm not immune to that either. But that too is something that we can deal with better these days. Thanks to a lot of progress in medical and psychological world. And thanks to technology, most of that knowledge is at your finger tips.
Very well put. No need to apologize for tech as a whole, nor is there a need for boosterism.
I can relate to the OP’s disillusionment coming from the halcyon days where “computers” were simply awesome.
Software development is quite unique in that a single person can have a huge impact. If your career doesn’t let you do that, you can do it as side projects or open source. How many other professions let you do that with such low barriers to entry?