In the tech industry we worship “disruption,” but to many people it’s a dirty word. In a world where insecurity and mistrust in organizations are increasing, technology has gone out of step with the beliefs of the general public increasingly. This places our companies at risk of hostile customer and legislation backlashes.
We need to change our attitude and our behavior, or our industry may be significantly broken in the a long time. The situation: No more win-win. Across many countries, and across the politics spectrum, we are viewing a dramatic erosion in individuals’ beliefs in win-win situations. Compared to the past handful of years, there’s less willingness to believe that the benefits of any change will outweigh the costs.
Along with this, there’s a general feeling of mistrust in institutions. Many people on both ends of the politics spectrum believe the politics and financial system is being gamed by insiders to the detriment of everyone else. Those emotions have been within our culture to some extent always, today the feelings are extremely strong but, and what’s especially unusual is that concern with the future and mistrust in institutions are rising jointly.
People are concurrently scared of change and unwilling to trust those who find themselves likely to protect them from its problems. That’s what offered us President Trump (link). People call him a businessman, but he actually practices a very particular kind of business: He’s a deal-maker from the true estate industry.
- Incompatibility with the operating system
- What price to charge customers for the goods
- Security Concerns
- Quick suggestion: Assign range tags to devices by using security organizations
- What if I don’t want others to remix my tasks
Mr. Trump is a perfect embodiment of the zero-sum attitude that’s rising in society today. The attitude is turning up more and more even in the supposedly-liberal press frequently, but most of us in tech don’t see it. We still have confidence in win-win situations. We have faith that the global world will be better for the changes we create, and we expect that to be obvious to everybody else. Silicon Valley is similar to a hothouse filled with orchids in the middle of a blizzard.
Warmed by our commodity and VC pitches, and protected by the buzz of our fans on social mass media, we fail to pay attention to the people out in the cool often. For at least a year I’ve seen a trend in the general press toward skeptical, if not hostile downright, coverage of leading tech companies.
Airbnb and Uber/Lyft are leading good examples. They’re poster children for disruptive change, and more and more I think the general press is within the damage they cause a lot more than the huge benefits. That’s understandable. Among all the sectors being disrupted at the short second, traditional journalism is one of the hardest strike. When reporters see their own careers threatened, can you really blame them when they show sympathy for other folks in the same vessel? For example, in the Los Angeles Times, coverage of Uber and Lyft has focused very on the damage to traditional taxi cab companies heavily, with significantly less attention on their benefits for the common citizen. The taxi cab drivers’ pain is real, and I don’t want to dismiss it.
But anyone who’s resided in LA can tell you that taxi cab service there’s always been dysfunctional: notoriously unreliable, slow, and expensive. If an industry deserved to be disrupted, the LA taxi cab industry could it be. A column in the NY Times detailed government efforts to regulate what it called the “frightful five:” Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google/Alphabet (hyperlink).
The truth that the Times’ tech columnist chose the word “frightful” to describe the country’s most successful consumer technology companies says a great deal, however the column added to the problem by quoting academics who fear the companies’ power. Do you realize Amazon is approximately to kill the nation-state? There is zero work to spell it out the benefits those companies produce, or the buyer harm that may be caused by regulation of these. In an identical vein, a column in the NY Times acknowledged tech with creating Donald Trump (hyperlink). One of the most disturbing thing to me is that the articles have become increasingly more shrill as time goes on. This is creating a toxic atmosphere for technology companies.
Our industry is focused on the benefits of change. For us, “disruption” is an optimistic thing. We welcome competition, because we assume that whenever a ongoing company or industry is demolished, the new one which replaces it will be even better. Our attitude is out of sync with the rest of the global world. Our optimism makes us sound callous and arrogant.