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the tech utopia fantasy is over

Growing up, there was a more positive view of tech. The future looked awesome - media showing how the future could look like had amazing ideas about how tech could help us and look cool doing it. It was all about comfort, less work, personalized assistance, reducing friction and hassle, unconventional designs, improved materials. The ads were painting a bright future with glossy robots, blinking datacenters, transhumanist image of cyborg-esque humans 1; an age of knowledge and connection, productivity and ease. We didn't have to think about how it was made, who would lose their job over it, how it would be profitable, how it would be repaired or recycled if broken, how much energy it would use or what rare metals would be needed. It was just cool.

Then came social media, and smartphones. A lot of tools in one, how convenient! How amazing to have the ability to record audio or take pictures while being so affordable! Now even poor people or people in poorer countries could access the internet and some valuable education unrestricted by their environments. I don't know if we had this view organically or if it was pushed on us by the tech companies in interviews and posts - but I distinctly remember this view that this would make society better, that it would be a big step forward for humankind.

The interconnection was presented as the ability to finally collaborate knowledge more quickly and enter a new knowledge era. The ability to produce and share your own content and become a star overnight online without casting managers and directors or record studios emboldened the idea of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, a geographically unlimited American Dream. Everyone could suddenly be rich or become educated. More free time, more money, more means for people to leave their economic class upward and have financial freedom. The option of having communication channels outside of journalism and documentaries was portrayed as more uncensored as authentic or fringe voices were being heard, documenting events live that would have maybe never been reported on otherwise. There was this idea that it would somehow severely reduce or end xenophobia and racism as we would all suddenly be able to interact with each other globally and learn that the others weren't so bad - a very simplified, almost childlike view of racism. There'd be clean energy, a solution for climate change; poverty would be solved. Ideally, we would now all come together and create something big while overcoming limits and bigotry.

And the tech companies were all just there to facilitate that for the greater good. Right. But is that true?

They're still evoking this image. Their ads featuring grandparents who don't have to feel alone because the family can videocall, or students quickly finding out facts for their assignment, neighborhoods organizing via their platforms, the image of tech enhancing the family life with grocery lists and drawings and games for the family!2 Nevermind that most of these are pretty dystopian if you sit and think on it. But more people are picking up on it now as it gets more overt, more apparent, that the marketing people and higher ups in tech seem to live in a bubble detached from the reality of millions; not realizing that a spot featuring how AI is writing the fan-letter for a child is not cute, not innovative or something to strive towards 3.

I do think the internet and tech managed to hit some of the advantages and goals - so far, it did facilitate more political knowledge and resistance4, circumvented government censorship5, let people meet and change each others lives who would have likely never met otherwise6; helped to gather knowledge7, gave better access to scientific studies, papers, statistics, and culturally important media8, helped piracy and archiving efforts9 and gave disabled and chronically ill more options to socialize10 - just to name a few things. But in my view, these positives are increasingly being overshadowed.

What about the goal of coming together to share knowledge and help everyone get better access to education? I think the internet undeniably helped with Wikipedia, YouTube tutorials, specialized blogs, forums and more - but now, the forums and specialized indie websites and blogs have been dying and are strongly de-prioritized by search engines, therefore hard to find 11. Informational posts on social media are walled off behind login screens12. At the same time, it is the top breeding ground for disinformation13, aided by AI that hallucinates information14. Together with the Fake News President, I've seen our time described as the "post-truth era" 15. It doesn't matter what the truth is, it is for who has the most power and money to decide what the truth is.

How about the bootstrap mentality? The internet has undoubtedly made people rich or well-off who may wouldn't otherwise be; but it's apparent that these are often people accused (and sometimes convicted) of sexual assault, harassment, abusing their employees, wage theft, tax fraud, and other crimes 16. They are people who need to game the attention economy by increasingly disrespectful and shocking content, gore, rage bait, dehumanizing pranks17, extreme consumerism like huge shopping hauls, sloppy large mukbangs, shredding lamborghinis18, gambling streams and websites19, game shows20 and more. And they have to do that to sell us products we don't need, banking on our insecurities. We've created an internet economy that incentivizes the worst in humanity - for clout, for money.

Educational content is still there, but everything is getting increasingly more paywalled. Scientific data is still harder to access and read21. The sensationalized rage bait articles are freely accessible, but the thorough analyses and takedowns are restricted22. Archives get taken down23, people are less willing to upload content for free. There's Patreon, and Udemy, and Skillshare, and more. You get a snippet, but the rest is in their 199$ course. Some of them are surely good and worth it, but it's still a shame that we have to do this when we were sold on a free future with less economic worries and in times where many people cannot even afford proper food.

What about xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination and bias? People are perceived as being more polarized and extreme24, there's talk of echo chambers and divided nations25. Comment sections are often toxic and full of hate speech26. Members of oppressed groups are bullied off of platforms27. Ads used online have been shown to be discriminatory because certain groups of people are specifically targeted and shown different prices, worse job offers or similar things28.

The sustainability of it all is the cherry on top. We are now at a point when it isn't just cool and aspirational. Now we do have to think about how it was made, who will lose their job over it29, on whose backs it makes profit30, how it will be repaired or recycled if broken31, how much energy or water it uses32 or what rare metals or finite resources it needs33. The fantasy is over.

"You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I an do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." by Joanna Maciejewska

Has the tech world kept up this image, their promise, their goals? No. Even with AI now and the ads released for Gemini, ChatGPT and others, they still bank on the utopian world state they failed to deliver even until now. It's like we're made to believe it is always just. out. of. reach. but the next technological advancement will fix it and finally make it real.

But they're lying. Obviously, companies will say and do what brings them the most money, this isn't new or a shocker. But greenwashing 34 is a problem. Making wonderfully diverse ads while internally still discriminating against women, people of color, disabled people and more 35 is a problem. Claiming you care about progress , innovation and talent but supporting anti-immigrant policies is a problem36. Presenting your products as a solution for systemic issues that you help facilitate by your voting and your wages and political donations or endorsements is disgusting, and so is using marketing to curate an image of the caring, careful, fair pay, progressive and ecological company while union-busting37, regularly losing your data or misusing it38 forcing RTO39 and pushing for deregulation in everything40.

I want to have a closer look on some tech companies and VC lobbying, their values, endorsements and political or environmental consequences.

This is just a selection (I am writing a casual blog post after all, not a book) - there’s surely more to dig up and more companies to talk about. Yes, there have been notable efforts to ease the negative effects these companies have or use their money for good42, but it is not enough, and there is a worrying trend of Tech veering strongly to the right and using the money they get from us and our data for questionable causes. And how is any of this in alignment with techs lofty, amazing sounding goals and marketing image? The solution cannot be to just throw more tech at it.

The point of all of this is to say: the tech utopia fantasy is truly dead to me. The image of the cool, hippie, leftist Silicon Valley tech is wrong. The companies themselves and the VC’s they take money from are supporting values and governments that do not act in your best interest and do not even align with their marketing image. Don’t be further misled. Stop giving them your money, time and data as much as possible for you. They won't bring us closer to these ideals they promise.

Published 15 Nov, 2024 - like button is below the footnotes.

  1. Some ad examples are IBM ads from the 1986, and magazine ads that have created aesthetics such as Retro-Futurism, Y2K-Futurism, Abstract Tech, Frutiger Aero and more. Sorry that I have to link to fandom, but this aesthetic wiki has really good visual examples.↩

  2. For some examples of this ad genre, see Samsung ads, Google ads, Amazon Alexa ads or Apple ads like this compilation or this ad or that one or this one. They all have many more of them.↩

  3. Google pulls Sydney AI ad after backlash↩

  4. Like this one paper talking about political knowledge through social media in Indonesia, or this Wiley editorial describing the internet as an important means for people to engage in acts of political participations, or this Pew research that sheds light on online activism and race. As for resistance and other direct acts, I think of social movements fueled by social media like BLM, #MeToo, the 4B movement and funny stuff like the TikTok prank of the Tulsa rally.↩

  5. Countries such as Turkey, Iran, Malaysia and more are known to cut off internet at times; China is known for their internet restriction. Turkey and Russia tend to ban websites and certain social media. Many use VPNs to bypass this, and sometimes tech companies attempt to help↩

  6. People are finding love on Discord. But this isn't new, since there are also World of Warcraft children.↩

  7. Like Wikipedia, Fandom Wikis, websites, forums and other collaborative efforts.↩

  8. Such as Google Scholar, JSTOR or the Gutenberg Project.↩

  9. This is shown by the recurring crackdowns against internet archives and people who want to save their digitally purchased (or rather: licensed) goods or play it on other devices that I'll get to later.↩

  10. Stories such as from Mats or Lucy are interesting here. The Internet Society has more about internet accessibility for disabled people.↩

  11. Joshua Tyler on GiantFreakinRobot posted about the gripes of independent site owners with Google. ldstephens was recently talking about it. In the news, you can find articles saying Google prioritizes forum content, but they mean Reddit.↩

  12. I mean how you cannot view Instagram stories without being logged in, or how on Desktop you cannot even click on the posts. On mobile, you cannot watch the same video twice. Many TikTok embeds seem to redirect you to the App Store/Play Store to install the app. X seems to jumble the posts while not logged in and prompts you to sign up when scrolling down. Reddit is highly inaccessible now because many communities are marked as "Unreviewed" and therefore only accessible within the app. Content deemed NSFW also needs an account, which sadly often even includes non-sexual, non-gore things like queer topics and spaces.↩

  13. Like this study that attempts to assign a Misinformation Amplification Factor to social media websites/apps. But I think we should all be familiar with this topic by now, even if just through news like how young US voters were shown misinformation on TikTok or how TikTok helped spread Russian lies.↩

  14. We've all heard of the glue on pizza, eating rocks stuff, but it's also less funny with people being accused of murder or abusing children or telling people to eat dangerous mushrooms (1, 2). Even if you don't see them, they exist; you might just not be the target.↩

  15. Post-truth and Post-truth politics Wikipedia articles; an example in the wild (of many) would be this Atlantic article. Interestingly, the NPR talking about the post-truth era is calling it a post-trust era instead.↩

  16. The most notable and current example you see everywhere right now is the MrBeast controversy (1, 2).↩

  17. You might remember Logan Paul's video of the suicide forest, or know of Johnny Somali's continuous racist and sexist pranks. These are just two of many more; the streaming platform Kick has been known for hosting the most awful content (1, 2).↩

  18. I like Hannah Alonzo's Influencer Insanity series, especially this episode and this one. Other than that, the content described is really well known in MrBeast's brand.↩

  19. There was this big Twitch scandal where a lot of streamers were promoting gambling (even to children) for their own gain (leading them to specific websites) or garnering viewers by actively gambling on stream.↩

  20. Again, like mentioned in the footnotes, MrBeast.↩

  21. The consequences: Slowed cancer treatment breakthroughs. There are more and more people deciding against this and taking action, thankfully.↩

  22. Democracy dies behind paywalls discusses this phenomenon.↩

  23. Like the legal troubles of the Internet Archive, but also litigious Nintendo taking down emulators and pirated games.↩

  24. Forbes article about how social media amplifies extreme views and "affective polarization". Princeton also writes about this.↩

  25. Example in the wild by the Washington Post. I would have provided an archive.is link, but I was #3564 in queue as of this writing.↩

  26. Behavior and moderation in Comments sections.↩

  27. One example is how the queer community is affected, especially trans women.↩

  28. Gender discrimination in job opportunities on Facebook; Amazon, Verizon, UPS and others being ageist. The ads itself can be discriminatory in their content.↩

  29. Contentious point if AI will do this or not; here's one article generally talking about the IMFs position, but we've already seen artists, actors and voice actors speak out about it; even AI being used with their likeness or sound against their will. Some companies have received backlash over lying about AI art being used instead of paying human artists.↩

  30. There is a human cost to AI: The people working behind it to annotate information, live watch and label and sort out offensive and traumatic content while being financially exploited.↩

  31. More reading on that: Right to Repair, Planned Obsolescence, issues with recycling (1, 2), history of waste shipments to non-OECD countries polluting them, and the issue of e-waste pollution.↩

  32. AI and cryptocurrency use a lot of energy and water. It's not just prompts, it's also the training. It's posing an issue for the grids in specific places as well as climate change prevention efforts. To provide allegedly clean and enough energy, people are calling for more nuclear fusion plants which have their own issues with disposal and possible catastrophes. Of course, Sam Altman too is calling for it while investing in the company Helion Energy.↩

  33. Electric cars, smartphones and anything with a lithium ion battery, solar panels, wind panels, AI datacenters and more all need finite resources or even rare metals. We should be aware of Earth Overshoot Day in this context as well, loosely related.↩

  34. Greenwashing Wikipedia as a starter.↩

  35. A few examples: Alleged pay discrimination by Apple; Gender pay discrimination and alleged racist discrimination at Google; Retaliation against employees who took protected leave (like parental and disability leave) at Microsoft; Amazon making it harder for disabled employees to work from home; Transphobia in Tech Companies.↩

  36. The CEOs of many tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more are all immigrants, and so are people like Elon Musk. Fwd.us, a lobbying group dedicated to immigration reform was left by him and many other tech leaders do not care for it. If they'd be truthful about their goals of innovation, protecting the immigrants who’ve built promising careers in tech would make the most sense - but many don't. Stopping immigration is a core issue of the Trump campaign. Delegates have called for “Mass Deportation Now.”, Trump has called the H-1B “very bad” and “unfair to US workers".↩

  37. Just look at Amazon's long history of anti-union practices, and repeatedly being in the news for union busting.↩

  38. Most well-known example: the Cambridge Analytica scandal.↩

  39. Return to office is usually forced in an ableist way, can hurt diversity and disadvantage women who are still more often than not the primary care-taker of elderly family members and children or suffering from chronic illnesses.↩

  40. I'll be detailing this in the next paragraph, but this article is giving a bit of an overview, and this one is looking further into tech companies lobbying against antitrust bills. Here's an article about government intervention in regards to tech. All there seems to be in many aspects are voluntary goals or commitments that are not enforcable, and companies like OpenAI or X let go their teams dedicated to safety.↩

  41. Whether Project 2025 will be genuinely followed or not is unclear but likely; it is telling and shocking enough to be allies to a man and party that is at least toying with these proposals.↩

  42. Like Apple's continued efforts towards privacy, reducing emissions and pollution, or Gates' philantropy investing into health, renewable energy, vegan food and more.↩