Episode 21: Technologists and the Technology Industry

The idea of tech as an industry is kind of an interesting one to me, partly because I'm not
sure how true of an industry it is at this point or maybe ever was. The reason I say that is because
technology is so integral and baked into almost everything, right? There's technology in the
transportation industry. There's technology as a piece of the finance industry. Banking, education,
everything has technology. Technology is inescapable. It is just part of what society
does with almost anything that it takes on. And it's almost odd to hear things like, well,
the tech industry this and the tech industry that. And you can see pieces of this in the way that
people talk about it because there's the tech industry, which presumably is some combination
of companies like the Facebooks and Googles of the world, plus the companies that make hardware,
say an NVIDIA. They're a tech company. And then like an Apple who does both, some combination of
other things. So some people refer to that as the tech industry. However, then you have these subsets
where people talk about, well, I work in FinTech or I work in EdTech or I work in, you know, language
tech or whatever. It seems at this point like an odd distinction. Technology is so pervasive. Why are we
still running around talking about a technology industry, so to speak? With all that said, that's just
sort of a loose preface to what I really wanted to look at here. Recently, I was listening to an
episode of ATP. If you're not familiar with ATP, it's the Accidental Tech Podcast. It's a great
podcast. I've listened to it for, I think, as long as they've been around. I mean, a little bit on and
off. I haven't heard every single episode ever, but great show. Very conversational combination of
entertaining and informative. And it's a good one. Anyway, I was listening to a recent episode. I
believe it was episode 627. I subscribe to their paid feed. So I'm not actually, this is a recent
thing for me. I can't sort out. They have like an after show and an after dark piece and a post show
and all these different pieces to their, to their thing. And some of those things are only available
to paid subscribers and some of them are available to, um, everybody. I'm not a hundred percent clear
as to what, like which of those segments I was listening to. So I'm going to try to link to this
in the description, but I might not be able to. Anyway, they were talking about this recent
movement that a lot of companies are now doing. It's very suddenly towards humanoid
robotics. So the general idea is that all these big companies, and I forget all the companies
that were listed because I didn't really keep up with this story all that well, but I think it was
like Google and meta and Apple and somebody else, um, all kind of came out and made these claims
that they were now going to embark on creating consumer grade humanoid robots that this was their
their next, their next, the, this was the next big thing in tech. Now the, the hosts were questioning
this. They were saying, well, that this doesn't seem right, that the technology isn't really there
for this yet. It hasn't been there yet. And it still really isn't there yet. Nothing monumental has
shifted. The company seemed to be claiming that somehow with the advent of LLMs, this was now more doable.
And maybe it is more doable, but the technology still really isn't there. That was sort of the
point of what the hosts were saying. And one of the other points that they were making was really
around these are, this is just companies scrambling to now find whatever the new frontier is in tech,
right? Whatever that next big thing is, because now, you know, the LLM revolution has been out for
the last two years. So we must be ready to move on. So, so now we're going to go find the next thing
that will bring in the big investor payday to some of these companies to keep them going for the next
two years or, you know, whatever. This all got me thinking about something that has been rolling
around in my head for quite a while. And I doubt I'm the only person who has had this sentiment,
or maybe even said these sorts of words, but this is just something that has rolled around in my head,
particularly over the last, I don't know, let's call it five years. That's not an exact timeframe,
but something like that. I think what it is, in part, is that technology is no longer driven
by technologists. It used to be. Now, I don't, I don't go all the way, I'm not old enough to go all
the way back to the advent of personal computing in the seventies and eighties. I was alive in the
eighties, but not, not old enough to be part of a, you know, that particular revolution, but I'm
generally aware of it. And this concept, this idea that people who were interested in computers
were the ones who were building them, people, people who saw a future there, or just thought
that they were cool, or, you know, they're looking for all sorts of different things to do with them
was really that first wave of consumer grade consumer targeting personal computers.
And then certain trends kind of fell out of that, right? Um, through the eighties, nineties,
and I would say even the, the two thousands, a lot of these big tech things, the social medias of
the world, the gaming industry, you know, computer gaming industry, the, the personal computers
themselves, uh, a lot of that stuff came from a place of people who loved technology.
And in a lot of cases understood or knew enough about technology where they, they, they had ideas
there that were based in things like reality. And they made a lot of really interesting products
and they, they rocketed the, the society and the world forward at a clip that had never been
seen before, as far as anyone is aware. And the world really evolved, but it was on the back of
people who really loved this stuff in many cases. I'm not saying in every single case ever, but in
many, many cases, you know, you take a Steve jobs, for instance, someone like him, like he, he, he was part of
that early curiosity about computers.
My understanding is that Bill Gates was in a similar spot. Like he, he knew something about, he was a
technologist at some point to some degree.
Zuckerberg, he built that first thing, you know, he knew how to do that. He was a technologist in
some capacity. And I think what we have evolved to in the quote unquote tech industry
is no longer driven by technologists. It's driven by business people and shareholders and finding the
next thing. And it's how you end up with crazy things like this, where, where, you know, a bunch
of companies that scrambled to all find dominance in the latest fad trend, whatever you want to call
it. Now we're looking for their next latest or their next step of a fad or a trend or whatever.
And they all decide, Oh, it's time for humanoid robots. But it feels so hollow to me. It feels much
more hollow this time around this particular set of announcements compared to, you know, AI
revolutions or social media revolutions before that, or, you know, the smartphone boon or
this one feels really hollow. It really feels like a bunch of non-technologist business people
getting together and making outrageous claims about something that will, if it ever comes to pass,
it will not come to pass in the same way that maybe they're trying to get people to believe it
will, you know, come to fruition. Now I understand the march of time. I understand that things change
and industries evolve. And in almost every industry ever, this is probably not that all that unique,
right? If you rewind in time to a time before technology, well, before, you know, computerized
technology and you look at industries from back then, I'm sure many industries initially came up
through people who really understood them and were passionate about them and loved them and all the
rest of it only to later be kind of taken over by this nebulous idea of business. So I understand all
that. I just, in this particular case, I find it to be a shame in many ways. Because if you rewind, people
really loved this stuff. And I feel like it has become less loved and less populated by people who are truly
passionate about it. And it was all of that passion and all that interest that initially got over the
first sets of hurdles that got it out of the cultural zeitgeist. It's almost in some ways like
coming full circle or something where, you know, the initial run of computer, computer geeks were on
the fringes of society. Then they, over time, became very mainstream and became, you know, really the,
the sort of the pinnacle of, of what intelligence and ingenuity and engineering and could become.
And now I've almost been pushed out of their own industry off into the fringes again to make way for
this giant money-making business machine that in many ways has corrupted the initial passion that,
that it was, you know, that the industry was born from.
The closest thing that I have to a takeaway here is just to remind people that if you're feeling a
little cynical about whatever it is you're passionate about, don't let that necessarily push you out of
it if you truly love it. The technologists who are passionate about technology and development and
engineering and whatever sub set of things, they're still out there. They're still working
on things because at a certain level, you can't not. You, you, if you're into this stuff, you don't
ever let it go. It may never become the hundred X crazy next giant business, but it's still worth
pursuing because that passion could be fulfilling to you. I know this is held true for me throughout the
course of my life. You know, even in my more cynical times, I do still love this stuff. I still love
technology and what it can offer and how it evolves and the new things that come around. So, um, it's just, uh,
uh, just a piece of encouragement to not give up on passions, even if at some times you feel that maybe
it's the time has passed for you, but your crowd is still out there somewhere and the things you can
accomplish are still worth doing.