Silicon Valley comes in for a lot of mockery and schadenfreude these days, and deservedly so.
You can鈥檛 launch products that are manifestly useless (Juicero!) or that reinvent the wheel (Bodega鈥檚 vending machines, Lyft Van鈥檚 buses, or the 鈥渃o-living鈥� apps that are 鈥渉aving roommates鈥�) without getting called out.
But I don鈥檛 hate technology. I鈥檓 about as far from a Luddite as you can get. I鈥檓 all for better technology, which has given us space flight, reliable vaccines, and clean water that comes out of the tap whenever I turn it on.
It鈥檚 just that I feel at odds with the culture of that intersection of technology, innovation, and commerce that we now typically abbreviate down to simply 鈥渢ech.鈥�
Technology can be any improvement, in any material good. You figure out how to make a better refrigerator, one that鈥檒l run on 10 per cent less electricity? That鈥檚 technology.
Tech is getting angel investors to fund your new startup, dubbed Frdjj, so you can ship your product to three billion homes, while generating additional revenue by data-mining your customers鈥� shopping habits and sending them sponsored reminders to buy a particular brand of soy milk through the mandatory-to-use-your-refrigerator Frdjj app.
For people with money, I worry that tech is sexy, and technology is boring.
That鈥檚 a disturbing thought.
There鈥檚 definitely some bubbles to come yet in modern tech investing, whether they鈥檙e happening now or yet to come.
But what鈥檚 invisible, bubble or not, are the worthy projects that are being bypassed and failing to get investing because they aren鈥檛, well, tech-y enough.
If you draw all the smart young folks coming out of universities into one field, it will, to a certain extent, slow down the development of other fields.
So we get another social media app instead of a more efficient way of designing sewer systems, or a cool Uber-for-microbrewing startup instead of a cleaner form of fuel.
Someday, the tide will turn again. But until then, we鈥檒l never really know how much technology we鈥檙e losing out on to tech.
