From 1958 to 1963, Americans had many reasons to be nervous about the future of technology. The Cuban Missile Crisis viscerally brought home that the crowning achievement of the atomic age, the nuclear bomb, had introduced the risk that a minor conflict could destroy the world by accident, all while Sputnik showed that the USSR had surpassed American engineering. Yet, one of the most popular comic strips during that period was Arthur Radeaugh’s Closer Than We Think, which ran in newspapers across America. Even in the depths of existential despair, we managed to maintain a sense of optimism surrounding the future that could flow from technology. It’s not just Radeaugh. In times long past, the popular press focused on our exciting future. Hugo Gernsbacks, of the Hugo Award, had a series called “Amazing Stories.” The most prominent pop culture from the time includes Star Trek, a utopian exploration series, and Star Wars, about a successful rebellion in space.
Today’s builders are met with a parade of haters, the kind of people who would make fun of the looks of the history aficionado who is Wikipedia’s biggest contributor. One of the first articles about CRISPR out of Wired, historically a booster for technology, was about the risks; another was about the need of a national biology policy. Elon Musk, though optimistic about self-driving cars, fears gravely for the future of a general artificial intelligence. The Smithsonian has even wondered whether the Luddites were on to something. And one writer in The Telegraph Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of curing disease was a “sickeningly bad idea” (seriously, lay off the Malthus!). This comes on the heels of a general depression with the direction of the world, spurred on in part by the lingering effects of the financial crisis and in part by the depressing state of democracy in the West.
When it comes to technology, the world feels like it’s in a special funk. There are legitimate concerns, and they should be discussed, but they aren’t the driving trend behind recent coverage. The dominant factor is just that negative stories tend to sell better than positive ones, even if they miss the big picture. After all, “if it bleeds, it leads.” But the irony is that society’s amazing progress comes from the clear-eyed optimism of entrepreneurs, not the pessimism of nitpicking naysayers. Founder optimism isn’t the belief that there’s nothing wrong (then why start a business?) but that we can make things better with some cleverness and hard work. And technology is an essential part of that story.
The way you make things better isn’t by debate but by taking action. People won’t always understand why or how they agree but they’ll vote with their wallets and their feet. Once society has actually gotten better and approached stability people will start to realize the good of what you’ve done, with the nice side effect of improving the lives of potential millions or billions of people. The chattering class critiques that change because they fear losing their privileged position. Even reading was once criticized as harmful to youth. Not by the medieval Church attacking printing press as a threat to its informational hegemony, but by 1930s parenting guides.
The reality is that technology is making the world better. It’s letting us bring blood to remote locations to save lives. It’s improving crop yields to fend off hunger. It’s brought car service to underserved areas while cutting down on drunk driving. While the media loves to bash large tech companies, they’re also some of the most loved brands and admired companies. While the rest of the world is cutting down on R&D, tech companies aren’t. They’re building the future of medical devices, self-driving cars, and same-day delivery. Global inequality is way down, life expectancy is way up, and you can call someone halfway across the world for free. That’s pretty great stuff. In fact, Steven Pinker wrote a whole book about it called Enlightenment Now! that you should read.
The world isn’t perfect. The so-called VC economy sometimes seems to be mostly composed of loss-making gig and subscription startups, some fraud (*cough* Theranos), and Juicero-scale money-pits instead of life-altering technologies. Caricatures aside, I’m concerned that technologists aren’t talking enough to subject matter experts and are therefore wasting energy in bad problem spaces. But that concern is tempered by the amazing founders who are rethinking not only our global economy but life and the human experience itself. And it pales in comparison to my fear that vocal pessimists are discouraging some people from becoming founders and changing the world, resulting in a huge opportunity cost. There will be risk and failure, but when you’re changing the world that’s just part of the game. I’ll be on the side of the people who are at least trying to make things better, thanks.
And when it comes to the press, right now it feels like much of the coverage is driven by vengeance, not neutral factfinding. It’s just victim blaming to print a headline calling Twitter “complicit” in helping Saudi Arabia silence dissidents when it was spied on — and then promptly fired the employee when they discovered he was a mole. Journalists have often criticized Amazon, calling its HQ2 search a “con, not a contest” — but I only know of two contemporaneous polls, and they both show overwhelming support for the project, probably because 25,000 people want the chance at a higher paying job and the attendant local development. This is part of a pattern. If only a journalist would say the quiet part loud.
Oh.
As a founder, it’s easy to get discouraged by the headlines. Just keep your head down and build the pessimists just won’t matter. Their complaints will stay the same. Your company won’t.
Remember the timeless words of Teddy Roosevelt:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Even the relatively dark “Metropolis,” considered by some to be the first Sci-Fi film, had an optimistic message at the end: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.” So keep at it. The world needs you, even if it won’t always be grateful.