So It’s Starting to Look Like My Generation Ruined the World

Reflections on three decades of tech

Tech in the early 2000s was just a bit magical. It had mad hobbyist energy, with quirky characters, experimental projects, and the feeling that everyone had been thrown together into a slightly off-kilter meritocracy. In other words, if you could build something that worked and made people’s lives better, you would succeed, personality and politics be damned.

Even back then, there were techbros eager to spread their utopian fantasies. CEOs and tech evangelists told us endlessly that “this changes everything.” They strode around conference stages in carefully chosen nerd garb, promising that their inventions would remake the world for the better.

The changes kicked off with The Web, a truly world-changing creation that was designed to help researchers share their scientific work, but was (at the time) mostly filled with pages of links that led to other pages of links. Then, a long string of promises began that stretches all the way to today. Facebook was supposed to promote social connection and cure loneliness. Twitter was going to spread free speech and democratic values across the globe. Smartphones were magical tools of personal autonomy and creativity. Bitcoin was going to defeat financial corruption and spark new philanthropic…