What’s the actual point of the tech industry?
As a freelancer who mostly works in tech—and was raised by sci-fi shows like Star Trek: Deep Space 9—I sometimes ask myself this question: what’s the actual point of the tech industry, at large?
I believe there are really only two answers, and only one of them is going to help us dig our way out of the hole our species finds itself in:
1 – The tech industry is about furthering humans/our planet in big and small ways.
2 – Or, the tech industry is about making money.
However, the actual bucket a tech company falls into is far less about a hard line in the sand, and more about a dedication to one school of thought while balancing the other.
Moreover, one of these ‘buckets’ actually matters in the grand scope of things.
Let me explain by comparing the two:
THE TECH INDUSTRY AS A VEHICLE FOR GOOD
The point of the tech industry, of technological progress, is to help humans. It's to make our lives easier/better/happier in some way.
Sometimes the goal is smaller; someone wants to make a website, but they don’t have the coding chops. This is where tools like WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify come in.
Sometimes the goal is bigger, like creating a COVID-19 tracking app that shows stats in real time, so people stay informed.
Whatever the goal may be, tech exists to address a human need (or desire), as all businesses are actually meant to do.
However, tech also bears a responsibility to the human race—and our entire planet—other industries don’t always have.
The reason tech is set to a higher standard of social responsibility is simple: it is the single greatest force in human self (and societal) actualization.
For example, we will evolve past the need for the 40 hour work-week, as we’ve evolved past the need for an 80 hour work-week.
This is made possible by technology: as productivity increases due to tech, this impacts the fabric of our society.
Consider automation, AI, and robots.
As these technologies aim to ‘fire’ humans from mundane, routine, difficult, or inefficient tasks, they cannot exist simply as a vehicle for wealth. There's a social aspect that must be considered.
Tech impacts far too much to be left harmless to its machinations.
THE TECH INDUSTRY AS A VEHICLE FOR WEALTH
Think about businesses like Facebook. Facebook is a data-mining clusterfuck with a dash of misinformation. It's also one gigantic ad platform.
Every single day, people sign-away their privacy rights, vomit up mass amounts of info that gets sold, take in actual fake news, and get badgered by ads for products they don't need.
Think about businesses like Twitter.
Twitter is a data-mining clusterfuck with a dash of social media capitalism.
By not cracking-down on the alt-right et al until it was too late, Twitter made its stance very clear: what drives social media engagement is good, regardless of who/what it is.
Twitter is an outrage machine that drastically harms mental health. Twitter's leadership does not care as long as they continue to grow.
Think about businesses like Youtube.
Youtube is an advertising platform with a dash of whatever it is Twitter is on about.
Even though it posits itself as a space for content creators, demonetization can happen at the drop of a hat, and stuffing as many ads as humanly possible into every video is the end-game.
Youtube—like Facebook and Twitter—exists to consume data, sell things and data, and leverage human beings interacting, speaking, and making things, in order to do just that.
All of these tech businesses may not have started as ways to churn and burn human currency, but they all ended up that way, anyways.
The sad reality is that, as capitalism is tied into everything we do—and it has to be as of right now—capitalism ends up being the only end-goal for tech.
Especially for Big Tech, who have since (or perhaps always) ignored the social responsibility and ramifications inherent to what they create.
Social ramifications like joblessness due to automation, privacy, data security, mass conspiratorial bullshit, and mental health challenges.
However, there are still tech businesses that reaffirm their responsibility to humanity, all while straddling the capitalism hell-pit.
The way they do this is by passing value checks and making choices.
THE TECH INDUSTRY, AT LARGE, HAS CHOICES IT MAKES THAT DEFINE ITS ETHOS
Value checks exist along the way towards big growth for tech businesses. Those value checks, I argue, are what defines the small, medium, and big players in tech. Those value checks are the only things that prevents technology from becoming our greatest enemy.
Those value checks are very real choices that very real people make in businesses all over the world. Very real choices that have very real real-world consequences.
A tech company can choose not to sell the data of its users.
A tech company can choose to crack down on misinformation.
A tech company can choose to make their services/products/platforms more accessible for people of all sorts.
A tech company can choose to hire and lift up employees who belong to marginalized communities and groups.
A tech company can choose to be radically transparent, empathetic, and put consumers—humans—first in their product decisions.
Let’s be clear: these choices all exist and aren't impossible.
These choices are absolutely not erased because money entered the chat.
TECH IS NOT INCAPABLE OF CHOOSING WHICH SCHOOL OF THOUGHT IT CENTERS
Make no mistake, people make these decisions. People have the choice between doing the thing that makes more cash, and doing the thing that helps more people (when both can't align easily).
Barring an absolute cash-flow meltdown, where this drastically impacts the humans working in tech spaces, there’s really no excuse for not centering the human-centric option, first.
Furthermore, if it gets to that point, the responsibility of keeping the business going relies completely on the humans who make the high-level decisions in said business.
Take, for instance, the Nintendo 3DS’ markdown situation (gaming is technology). The president and board of directors, rather than laying off a huge chunk of their workforce, decided to take a pay cut.
This was a decision, made by people, that put people first.
Choosing the righteous path may mean leadership takes on more of the workload, or finds creative ways to streamline processes to save money. That's why technology exists. It doesn't have to erase the bottom line's financial mobility, either.
This may mean investing in employee training, health, and happiness, in order to prevent the $11 billion dollar a year drain created by employee turnover.
This may mean, instead of rapid outwards expansion, that a business takes a more careful, long-term approach to decision making. One that looks to the far future, not just quarterly gains.
Tech is not incapable of making people-first choices.
It’s just that so many tech businesses—especially the big guys—choose not to.
WHAT IS THE ACTUAL POINT OF TECH, EXACTLY?
Tech is a balancing act between two value systems (cash and humanity) and it can never not be. Because technology is how we will evolve in perpetuity, the tech industry has no choice but to make deliberate decisions about which value system it ultimately serves.
Where we find ourselves, right here, right now, is due to the choices made by actual human beings—point blank. And it's not great, let me just say.
Furthermore, where we find ourselves tomorrow, the day after, and five years from now, also boils down to choices made by humans.
Human health, betterment, happiness, and actualization absolutely must be a data field in our spreadsheets—not just ROI.
Not just for our consumers either, but for tech employees, and the health of the planet, too.
Like I said, only one of these answers is going to help us dig ourselves out of the hole our species finds itself in.
Only one answer is actually looking to the future, and sees a post-scarcity, pro-science, pro-education, life-centric, self-actualized society as a possible path.
The other answer?
It sees an end-goal that would have every single person be a cog in a perpetually dying machine of its own making, that it can, if it chooses to, avoid.
What choice will you make?
What choice will you make?