Tech Owes You an Apology

(draft) Too often: This Changes Everything!

an image with no alt text Wait... weren't we just on 5G?

For many years, the tech business has been distracting you with promises of Utopias. One technology after another has been celebrated as the best ever, with pitches and headlines proclaiming the equivalent of "This changes everything!"

Yes, personal computers, the Internet, Open Source software, the Web and smartphones were all real and huge, if perhaps they missed bringing Utopia much closer.

But many other themes fell way short. Remember:

Old hands may remember Push, Pen Computing and the Segway. You likely have your own favorites.

Most of these were distractions. If you spent time learning about them, then spent money implementing them, chances are you didn't get far and wasted considerable resources.

I don't mean to say that these ideas don't contain useful technologies. They do. But these technology descriptions are like looking into a giant warehouse of awesome tech and saying the ferris wheel and yo-yo are going to be the earth shaking inventions that matter. They truly miss the point.

So I want to apologize on behalf of the tech industry for these distractions. We get pretty excited pretty often, not always about the right things.

And when we do, often all hell breaks loose. Startup Culture's dire need for hyper-profitable exits plus capitalism's intense focus on sucking the profit and value out of everything it touches combine to steal the soul from many useful movements. Please read the individual pages on these movements (the links above) for explanations.

Enter GenAI

Now Generative AI joins this list. GenAI is different.

GenAI Is the Real Deal.

What's your position on GenAI?

This raises an important question: Will GenAI Survive Capitalism?

Jerry Michalski


This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.


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