July 03, 2019 at 07:02PM
Welcome back to Tech Chronicle. Unless you're wholly indifferent to the industry, subscribing is an excellent way to feel all your feelings about tech.
Tech is what you see in it
In what's almost a quarter-century of looking at tech, I've tried to avoid being either a cheerleader or a scold, the two mental categories people working in the industry seem to assign to journalists.
When I covered the dot-com boom, I seemed surrounded by cheerleaders. I recall one colleague who declared every new initial public offering would be a "rocket ship." (Sound familiar today?) Lately, the scold has been ascendant, and some tech companies deserve a scolding and worse.
With so muchgoing wrong, it's easy to ignore the good technology does. And in understanding that good, it's crucial to understand how that good is wrapped up with the potential for evil.
Take meal delivery apps. The easy critique: Postmates, Caviar and Uber Eats infantilizing Millennials, who no longer have to make their way into a physical restaurant and interact with other people to get a meal or cook for themselves. (Does anyone know how to cook something that's not delivered in a portioned kit with instructions?)
Another way to look at it: Restaurant profit margins are hammered, and if delivery apps channel more orders into a kitchen, then a small business can make more money off the same kitchen.
Instagram is ruining our brains, fueling an American aspirational culture that's out of control and threatening teenage girls' mental health. Or conversely, it's allowing small retailers to find customers in niches that were previously too hard to market.
Scooters are frivolous toys littering our sidewalks. Or they're smart, eco-friendly vehicles that fill in gaps in public transit without putting more polluting cars on the road.
Try to categorize any new invention as wholly good or wholly bad, and you fail to see the bigger picture.
That's not to say technology is neutral.
Technology is how human beings accomplish the things that give us humanity. Books are technology. Guns are technology. Take humanity in all its complexity, and that gives you the moral content of innovation.
— Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com
Quote of the week
"Even though people think there is diversity in the city, there isn't really." — Adrianna Tan, a startup product manager, commenting on how new recruits arriving in San Francisco all seem to come from the same socio-economic class, in Julia Carrie Wong's look at how even tech workers are complaining about San Francisco in the Guardian
Coming up
On Thursday, Americans will celebrate with fireworks, and Ramona the Love Terrier will cower under a blanket. The markets are open Friday, which is a good reminder that Nasdaq rhymes with "whack."
What I'm reading
Lily Hay Newman explains why you need to know about the internet's Border Gateway Protocol —and how hackers are using it to create outages and manipulate data. (Wired)
Sophia Kunthara on the latest flare-up over broadband — and it's not net neutrality. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Davey Alba and Ryan Mac examine Amazon subsidiary Ring's questionable practice of using customers' security-camera footage in ads. (BuzzFeed News)
Tech Chronicle is a thrice-weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicle's business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicleSign Up for the Newsletter
Want to get the latest on Silicon Valley in your inbox? Subscribe to Tech Chronicle.
Welcome back to Tech Chronicle. Unless you're wholly indifferent to the industry, subscribing is an excellent way to feel all your feelings about tech.
Tech is what you see in it
In what's almost a quarter-century of looking at tech, I've tried to avoid being either a cheerleader or a scold, the two mental categories people working in the industry seem to assign to journalists.
When I covered the dot-com boom, I seemed surrounded by cheerleaders. I recall one colleague who declared every new initial public offering would be a "rocket ship." (Sound familiar today?) Lately, the scold has been ascendant, and some tech companies deserve a scolding and worse.
With so muchgoing wrong, it's easy to ignore the good technology does. And in understanding that good, it's crucial to understand how that good is wrapped up with the potential for evil.
Take meal delivery apps. The easy critique: Postmates, Caviar and Uber Eats infantilizing Millennials, who no longer have to make their way into a physical restaurant and interact with other people to get a meal or cook for themselves. (Does anyone know how to cook something that's not delivered in a portioned kit with instructions?)
Another way to look at it: Restaurant profit margins are hammered, and if delivery apps channel more orders into a kitchen, then a small business can make more money off the same kitchen.
Instagram is ruining our brains, fueling an American aspirational culture that's out of control and threatening teenage girls' mental health. Or conversely, it's allowing small retailers to find customers in niches that were previously too hard to market.
Scooters are frivolous toys littering our sidewalks. Or they're smart, eco-friendly vehicles that fill in gaps in public transit without putting more polluting cars on the road.
Try to categorize any new invention as wholly good or wholly bad, and you fail to see the bigger picture.
That's not to say technology is neutral.
Technology is how human beings accomplish the things that give us humanity. Books are technology. Guns are technology. Take humanity in all its complexity, and that gives you the moral content of innovation.
— Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com
Quote of the week
"Even though people think there is diversity in the city, there isn't really." — Adrianna Tan, a startup product manager, commenting on how new recruits arriving in San Francisco all seem to come from the same socio-economic class, in Julia Carrie Wong's look at how even tech workers are complaining about San Francisco in the Guardian
Coming up
On Thursday, Americans will celebrate with fireworks, and Ramona the Love Terrier will cower under a blanket. The markets are open Friday, which is a good reminder that Nasdaq rhymes with "whack."
What I'm reading
Lily Hay Newman explains why you need to know about the internet's Border Gateway Protocol —and how hackers are using it to create outages and manipulate data. (Wired)
Sophia Kunthara on the latest flare-up over broadband — and it's not net neutrality. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Davey Alba and Ryan Mac examine Amazon subsidiary Ring's questionable practice of using customers' security-camera footage in ads. (BuzzFeed News)
Tech Chronicle is a thrice-weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicle's business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicleSign Up for the Newsletter
Want to get the latest on Silicon Valley in your inbox? Subscribe to Tech Chronicle.