Redirecting the Techlash
Big tech deserves its lashings — but we still need technology solutions
The world is warming, the middle class is shrinking, journalism is withering, hate is spreading, censorship is rising, and democracy is dying. At least according to the headlines. Histrionics notwithstanding, the problems outlined in an ever-increasing number of think pieces and op-eds are, often, quite real. Depictions of the hellish futures that await humanity are everywhere, and it’s unsettling how plausible some of these futures seem to be. Even more unsettling to me is that while many see a world that’s headed to hell in a handbasket, the mantra of the moment is still “tear it all down.”
This righteous rage against is prevalent in modern life. From a politics focused on opposition (abolish ICE, prevent judicial appointments, repeal the Affordable Care Act) to the cultural act of deplatforming to the backlash against the big technology firms, we are in a cultural age that Martin Gurri has described as political nihilism — an age of pure negation. Or, as an insightful friend once put it, “shared hate is much stronger than shared love.”
The technology sector has proven to be fertile ground for humanity’s shared hate: Even Republicans and Democrats can agree to hate on big tech. The Trump administration — having accused social…
