I think this article overestimates how much the average person knows about tech. People know who Musk, Bezos, and Gates are, but hardly anyone outside of tech knows who Collison is. Most don't know much about VC funding either, but they certainly can see when products have become too smart to the point where they get needlessly complicated.
Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
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Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#62With all the money floating around in tech you'd think PR would be solveable. But you still have AI founders going out in public and saying they want to get rid of jobs instead of some pitch about how easy work will get or you'll be happier or etc. Why?
They live in a bubble and don’t understand that getting rid of jobs is not universally seen as a good thing.
If you haven’t read it already, I can recommend “Careless People”, this is a constant theme in the book.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#63Hating the tech industry is mainly seen amongst the first world countries and the rich educate, high status people amongst them. I posit that the reasons are - the need for conservatism and slowing down progress is inherent in people. Last time it was opposing LGBTQ and racial discrimination and now it is technology. Its the same mode of opposition, people just don't like chaotic progress. - people who have good jobs…
That's a weirdly optimistic view of technology. Specially the comparison to homophobia and racism. Yes, tech has solved people's basic but real needs for communication, banking, entertainment, etc. Then after a certain level, without aggressive dark patterns, people's needs for tech were basically met. No one needed social media, we needed social networks. No one needed inescapable "algorithms"¹ besides the ones trying to screw us over. What is this "status quo" you're talking about? And what is this technology progress that is threatening it?
¹ using the term "algorithms" here in its colloquial non-tech sense.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is capitalism and the injustices it creates. The hated industries are just symptoms.
The problem isn't capitalism, well it's not JUST capitalism. If you give any group of individuals that level of wealth control, the same pattern repeats. They can be shareholders, board directors, or commissars or general secretaries of the people's party, a prince or a duke, or the first citizen. It doesn't matter, all you need to replicate the same problems is concentration of wealth and power and the ability to di…
Indeed. It's just that capitalism produces immense concentrations of wealth as a core feature of the system.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#65For the people I know, the biggest things are: (1) Addiction engineering, and the fact that the tech industry found a way to transform what was supposed to be a machine to improve human education and cognition into a digital version of tobacco or a casino. I am personally disgusted by this. If you're working on a pop "social" app or a game and designing it to have a "compulsion loop," you are doing mind control and y…
I think you've got good points. With respect to #3 I think there's a general problem with concentration of capital and general "hoarding". One example. Berkshire Hathaway has $400 billion dollars in the bank that they can't invest because they need high returns. So the capital is locked up. (The banks who hold the funds are restricted in what they can invest in). Multiply this by loads of other companies. Add in fund…
I'm not sure that's really true. The banks that hold Berkshire's money don't just stick it in a vault, they lend it out to people who want to finance a home or car or to businesses that use the money to grow.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#66With all the money floating around in tech you'd think PR would be solveable. But you still have AI founders going out in public and saying they want to get rid of jobs instead of some pitch about how easy work will get or you'll be happier or etc. Why?
It’s because they don’t pitch to the users. They pitch to the investors. Have noticed how everyone and their dog now has an “AI story” on their website? Yeah, because they won’t get funding otherwise. And these are not even the AI companies!
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#67Hating the tech industry is mainly seen amongst the first world countries and the rich educate, high status people amongst them. I posit that the reasons are - the need for conservatism and slowing down progress is inherent in people. Last time it was opposing LGBTQ and racial discrimination and now it is technology. Its the same mode of opposition, people just don't like chaotic progress. - people who have good jobs…
> Last time it was opposing LGBTQ and racial discrimination and now it is technology.
The attacks on and hate of trans people are on the rise. There seem to be literal strategy of preventing blacks and women from career rise in military and government. And all of these are enabled and helped by tech. The radicalization and hate grows due to our algorithms.
> tech industry keeps threatening the status quo again and again
Tech industry is the status quo, it represents people with good jobs and high status looking down on everyone else. It was like that for decades now. Tech industry is all about creating monopolies, consolidating and killing the competition.
> when the historical trend points to optimism instead
It does not. We failed to manage climate change. The world is moving from stability to chaos, toward more wars. The politics of several countries is turning toward openly fascists. The powerful are less and less accountable, amassing more and more power. Corruption is at unprecedented levels.
Good times already were. We are going toward bad times and things will start improving only after they will get really bad first.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#68> Most people outside the tech industry don’t care
This is and always will be incorrect and just the go-to excuse and/or justification. People do care but their brains are too muddy from stress, lies, ambiguous information and the lack of time to separate truth from campaigns/propaganda/proprietary agendas.
This can be interpreted as people not actively caring, as in the infamous "nobody cares" and "nobody can do anything about that anyway" but it's actually passive carelessness that has it's origin in a conspiratorial kind of treatment of lower classes by upper classes. But that's boring.
What's exciting is that it holds true upwards. Top 10% earners "don't care" if they "loose" 50000 dollars due to fraud by people "above their pay grade".
Hop, hop, hop ... people hate the tech industry because they somewhat expect that skilled and/or smart people with resources, opportunity and time do things the right way ... because they can, because they say "we can" and "we will" and "the people" a lot in various ways.
It causes at least a little nausea to suddenly realize that young or middle aged or seasoned engineers and business people behave like aging placeholder representatives that were picked because they are "representative enough".
This, of course, partially stems from several cognitive fallacies about the things that evolution and expertise seem to imply but don't.
In the end, it's not hate but recurring disillusionment and disappointment ... that the tech industry is no better than 13 year old drug dealers getting the teens next door hooked on punched bullshit or violent pimps and malpracticing doctors.
"It's a shame, really."
That said, the tech industry is doing it's job and delivers and it's human nature to expect "more" from capable people as well as to be disappointed when they don't--especially when patterns of malicious intent emerge and become systematic and systemic ... which has been halpening over and over again ...
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#69Yeah. "Hate": https://www.kapwing.com/blog/why-does-the-public-hate-the-te... Re the linked piece, I'm concerned about people saying "they hate us" when they really mean "they disagree with us" or "they seem skeptical of what we say." It can easily become click bait. The language changes, sure ... but equating disagreement with the emotion of hatred? Maybe that language change is a bad idea? Just spitballing here.
I think hate is the perfect word.
Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
#70I think there are a few reasons to note here: 1. Tech is associated with a lot of the issues affecting society right now, while other business sectors often aren't. Data centres and the rising price of computer components, social media addiction, gambling apps, surveillance, etc. These are all things in the news or affecting people's daily lives, and the 'tech industry' tends to get the blame for them. 2. Many of the…
I beg to differ on point 3. The media has been extremely accommodating to the AI evangelists.