As time goes on, tech seems to become increasingly detached from the lifestyles of normal people. AI friends, automated gift-giving, sunglasses you can talk to. Nobody wants this — it doesn’t meet people where they’re at and resolve real friction in their lives — but billions will be spent convincing us otherwise.
Maybe this is a side effect of tech workers themselves becoming more detached from the rest of the population. You are statistically unlikely to get a job at Google or Meta if you were not cultivated from day one as a high-achieving box ticking grinder. Anything that does not contribute to TC maximization is unimportant here. Beauty, human experiences, and other such intangibles are irrelevant in that worldview.
SV didn’t used to be this way; there were all different manners of perspective and smarts, which led to genuine innovation. Now we are dominated mostly by a hybrid of hyper-efficient, paperclip maximizing engineering and sociopathic MBA share price optimization.