A Few Predictions for Tech in 2019
2018 was the year tech finally started to reckon with its demons. Let’s try to fix them.
I want to start off by saying that I am in absolutely no way uniquely qualified to predict… much of anything. This article is mostly an exercise in thinking about the world outside my day-to-day focus — what’s happening in the industry I’ve chosen, and what do I think (and hope) will come in 2019. Don’t take these claims to seriously, especially the more conspiratorial takes. And if you must dunk — and from time to time we all must dunk — at least do so in good faith.
2018 certainly was A Year
The most interesting trend in tech, in 2018, is hands-down the trend toward ethics and labor / political organization. Four or five years ago, the overwhelmingly pervasive opinion was that supermassive tech companies were data-hungry and occasionally careless, but ultimately benevolent. So what changed? As far as I can see, three things, the earliest of which is the Amazon Echo.
In the 3 short years since its official launch, it’s managed to carve out a foothold in a category almost entirely to itself — always on, always listening AI audio assistants. On it’s own, this would be fairly unremarkable (Apple released the “Hey Siri” trigger functionality shortly after the Echo), but the hyper-consumerist nature of Amazon’s brand and business model seems to have made it easier for us to collectively connect the dots: this product exists solely for the purpose of separating us from more of our money. At least it can keep timers reliably.
The next thing to have changed since the halcyon days of benevolent website overlords was an immediate consequence of the former — we all became absolutely convinced that Facebook was listening to our every conversation. A wave of conspiracy theories, ranging from passive audio capture running on the Facebook mobile app to Facebook outright purchasing audio data from Amazon has crashed over the tech industry, and won’t quite seem to go away. In an article published 3 days prior to this one, Vox published “The perennial debate about whether your phone is secretly listening to you, explained,” in which author Kaitly Tiffany argues that Facebook is almost certainly not, but that their boundless will to consume and distill personal information into a hyper-specific advertising profile is highly problematic regardless of the precise means of accomplishing it. Facebook, of course, categorically denies doing any of these things, but given everything else they’ve categorically denied, I personally find it easy to be drawn in by the theory that, yeah, sure, they’re spying on your voice assistant along with every other facet of your life that we know of. What we do know is that Facebook has had at least 2 major security leaks in 2018:
- Facebook hack leaks data from 30 million users
- Facebook exposed up to 6.8 million users’ private photos to developers in latest leak
We know they’re being sued for inflating video ad watch metrics by over 900%. And most critically, we know they’re also complicit in the third major change to have occurred since 2014: the role social media, and especially algorithmically curated content feeds, have played in the rise of organized right-wing nationalism and the election of Donald Trump. Facebook specifically has been found to be in part responsible for the election by way of selling the data of 87 million users to right-wing political consultant Cambridge Analytica and enabling Russian-run bot accounts to skew public opinion.
The mood has shifted, and suddenly we’re all collectively paranoid, guarded, frustrated, and distrustful of technology at large. It’s a response that, given the circumstances, makes a lot of sense, but considering the hand that so often feeds us, it’s frankly unsustainable. Some pressure has to give somewhere. And while I ultimately believe that regulation is needed on a number of fronts — the substantial taxation of billionaires, the fidelity of information on social media, and the security of private data collected online (and I believe this regulation is coming) — in 2019, it’s boots-on-the-ground tech labor that will start turning the pressure valves and making the necessary change.
So what will that look like? Are we all going to take to the streets with torches and burn Zuck in effigy? I doubt it. Most likely, the change will be incremental, and I think it starts with doubling down on ethics and labor organization.
Ethics & Labor Organization
Ok, maybe Full Communism Now is a little drastic, but the 2016 election forced an unprecedented rise in 2018 midterm elections, especially amongst my historically disenfranchised and disinterested generation — more than 30% more than those who voted in the 2014 midterms. (Which is still only a total of 31%. At least it’s a start.) Democratic Socialists of America broke 40,000 in membership, one of whom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has become the youngest Congresswoman in US history. It seemed for the first time in my life that all of my peers were politically motived, hosting phone banking parties and vehemently debating the nuance of every last office and ballot measure. In 2019, I expect this to start to bleed into how we do business as an industry. For leadership, especially in startups and VC firms, ethics will likely take a direct role in differentiation. The estimable VC Fred Wilson does a great job articulating the competitive advantage startups can gain by understanding their investors’ LPs and their interests.
Recruiting focus, which has shifted at least once in my time (from ping-pong tables and nerf guns to catered meals and “Diversity & Inclusion”), will shift again to focus on the company’s broader impact on society. Disappointingly, this will probably have the same bottom-line impact as the D&I shift has, but it will help get the conversation started. I believe the real heavy lifting will be done by tech labor at large companies. From that perspective, I think we’ll see the first substantial tech workers union in 2019. And ideally, it will be organized at least in part around ethics.
This will probably take one of three forms, though I’d be guessing at which in particular. The first, and least “revolutionary” would be the rapid expansion of an existing organization like the Tech Workers Coalition. The TWC is a cross-functional, cross-company organization that promotes solidarity with existing movements towards social justice, workers’ rights, and economic inclusion — all in line with traditional union priorities. All labor organization has power, so if this outcome occurs, I hope it will bear out an agenda for ethical product.
The second is an organization at a manufacturing or retail giant like Amazon. While this is the least likely in my opinion, I think Bezos’ runaway wealth, atrocious treatment of warehouse and delivery workers, and abuse of public services like the USPS and the cities of New York and Seattle, could conspire to drive Amazon labor to organize cross-functionally. A strike for more humane warehouse conditions would go much further if backed by the engineering staff.
The last, and what I consider to be the most likely, is a spontaneous movement at a software giant like Google, Microsoft, or Facebook. At Facebook, morale has wavered as a result of the seemingly never-ending onslaught of security breaches and outright malevolent business tactics. At Microsoft, employees drafted an open letter to CEO Satya Nadela, insisting the company decline to bid on the US Military’s project JEDI, an ambitious and secretive cloud infrastructure project the implied purpose of which is to create a “more lethal military force.” And at Google, we saw one of the largest collective actions to be taken in our industry when over 20,000 white collar tech workers world-wide walked out in solidarity with Google employees who have been sexual harassed by Google executives. The rumblings are there.
If this happens, it will be unlike most other labor movements, because the focus will be much more substantially on product ethics. Life at these companies is certainly not devoid of unjust hardships for labor, but the talent shortage and cost of replacing labor make production conditions at these companies some of the most luxurious in the world, at least comparatively. So labor, if organized, is in a unique position to aim higher and voice contention for what is being produced, instead of how. Regardless of what form labor organization initially takes, I really do believe we’ll see at least the early definitive indicators in 2019, and it will go on to have a substantial effect on the 2020 political landscape.
Policy and Security
GDPR, while a fairly typical EU mish-mash of compromise, is a good leading indicator of a shifting political attitude world-wide: the accrual of identifying information is a matter of public safety and security. And while I think it’s unlikely that US will enact any meaningful legislation on this front so long as it has a cartoon caricature of late-capitalism as its head of state, I do think we’ll see movement at the state level. (Which is where all meaningful change begins anyway.) My guess is that we’ll see a focus on two primary categories.
First is Net Neutrality. Since its dismantling at the federal level of by the comically corrupt Ajit Pat, California has passed SB 822, ensuring basically the same protections to all of California. I expect at least a few other states to follow suit in 2019–2020, pending the particular outcome of the equally comically corrupt DOJ lawsuit against the CA law. As of this writing, IL, MA, NJ, NY, NC, PA, and more all have Net Neutrality (or Net Neutrality-adjacent) legislation pending. Considering how deeply unpopular the federal dismantling was in the first place, I have a lot of faith in all of us to push our state governments toward the right outcomes.
Second is definitely the more abstract of the two — I suspect that we’ll see movement toward some regulation around abusive dark patterns in tech. The lowest-hanging fruit is probably the abuse “tech” companies lob at children. For example, Juul has almost single-handedly reintroduced nicotine addition into American high schools.
We’ve been down this road with Big Tobacco before, so I could easily see a similar eradication campaign for vapes. Here’s hoping.
Game companies like Activision could also be a target, as they continue to ply money from kids with thinly veiled gambling mechanics like loot boxes. China already banned them outright, and South Korea, Singapore, and the UK are all actively investigating their sale as an unlicensed form of gambling. Though, with Fortnite’s unbelievable $3B 2018 revenue, the industry may self-regulate here and turn towards direct sales for in-game content. It apparently works.
The bigger phenomenon worth our attention might not be able to be addressed from a policy perspective at all in 2019. According to Dr. Gentile, associate research professor of developmental psychology at Iowa State, “Addiction to video games and Internet use, defined as ‘serious dysfunction in multiple aspects of your life that achieves clinical significance,’ does seem to exist.” Which should come as little surprise when we look at Apple’s flagship iOS 12 feature — Screen Time. Daily usage reports of upwards of 4 hours seem to be fairly common, and as we start to have these numbers reflected back at us, I suspect we’ll at least want to make a change. In 2019, more tools to help us in that endeavor will probably be built, and we may even see a tonal shift from any company not driven by ads; a call to moderation, at the least.
By way of honorable mention, we will definitely see the continued regulation of cryptocurrency in 2019. The wave of gold rush grifts is finally, more or less, over, and through 2019 we should see it dwindle away entirely. God willing, John McAfee will go with it.
VC Fads
Speaking of the crypto rush, the biggest VC fad of 2017–2018 was easily blockchain. This year, Coinbase raised a whopping $100M Series D at an estimated $8B valuation and both Robinhood and Square Cash released cryptocurrency wallets within weeks of each other. With the regulatory pushback on the more obvious scams, the near total deflation of even long-running currencies like Bitcoin, and the industry realization that blockchain is just a slow database, we’re finally going to see fleeting VC interest turn to the next thing. It’s still too early to call exactly what that will be, but I’m imagining it’ll come from the milieu of things that TikTok has gotten right, things that Instagram and Snapchat have gotten wrong, podcasts in general for some reason, machine learning as general purpose technology, and the new darling regulatory subversive: hims.
As for the legitimate blockchain companies soldiering on, I suspect that the shift won’t affect them much. After all, actual AR & VR progress is still being made years after VC as a whole has moved on. And while it does, Arlan Hamilton will continue investing in all of the serious and seriously underestimated founders likely left out of the next big fad.
2019 also sounds like A Year
So is all of 2019 going to be political tumult and venture frivolities? I doubt it. Our industry is decades overdue for a major moral correction, and the predictions I’ve made so far would only amount to a minor one at best. It’s the beginning of the work we’ll need to do culturally, societally, and professionally, but it won’t be happening in a vacuum. The great bubbling cauldron of tech will still produce amazing and weird new tools and ways of thinking. From what I’ve been able to put my eye to, I think the biggest leaps will happen in Identity, Education, Collaborative Creation, Communication, and Predictive Creativity. Or at least that’s how I think of them.
Identity
The vanguard of internet technologists have been focused on defining (and redefining) what “online identity” can mean since the first day it could mean anything. From forums and MySpace, to SecondLife, to Instagram and Fortnite, we’re constantly reimagining our digital selves as different contextual lenses of our offline selves. To me, it feels like 2018 is the first year where we all collectively felt the cracks in our beloved social media platforms; the first year where we could really see the deterioration inherent to the model of a platform enslaved to ad revenue and “influence.” The selves we are on Instagram and Facebook have lost their value. I can’t say for certain what comes next, but I think it — or more likely they — will be characterized by a few things.
One: influence won’t be a primary incentive. This probably means no ads, but not necessarily. One of the best late 2018 examples of this, in my opinion, is Screenhole, an unabashedly fun social network where you post screenshots.
Two: real world context will be deeply incorporated. Obviously, I stan a good mixed reality experience, but I really do think that companies like Niantic have managed to capture something fundamentally true about the mobile internet: it’s at its best as an extension of our real world selves. Another great example of this is the brand new music experience app, Holon. Holon uses IoT data and bio-musicological principles to generate synth music in sync with your physical activities. It’s pretty dope. Let’s do more of this.
Three: creativity will be prioritized over uniformity. Platforms like TikTok, while limited in their viable mass appeal, do a good job of giving users the lego kit of creative tools needed to let them express themselves. And Glitch, a social coding platform I mention at least 3 times in this piece, has done a phenomenal job of clearing the way for all programmers, regardless of expertise, to experiment and ideate on artistic code projects. By considering creativity as a first order principle, our next major social platforms will enable their users to accomplish something we’ve had to hack into all preceding networks: the ability to express ourselves.
From a technology perspective, specific to the online identity space, I’d pay close attention to MR/AR frameworks like Apple’s HealthKit and ARKit and Google Maps’ game engine. General tech that will be useful will probably include GraphQL, AWS’s ML tools, and Glitch.
Education
The student debt crisis in America is nearing a fever pitch. And with over 2 million people owing $100,000 or more against a median income of ~$62,000, the $1.5T tower seems likely to come crashing down at any moment. Alternatives are becoming necessary. From a formal job training perspective, I’ve been pretty unambiguous in my support for Lambda School, and what really sets it apart from other code bootcamps is CEO Austen Allred’s thesis on the mounting debt crisis and how to align the incentives of academic institutions with those of the students. By tying Lambda’s compensation to that of the student only after a successful hire, every change to the curriculum, educators, or job placement process is reflected in their bottom line — precisely as it is for the student’s bottom line. This alignment elegantly resolves the disconnect between the student, the university, and the job marketing. But I also think non-academic platforms will be critical in reforming education. Glitch (we’ll call this mention #2) in particular is building an interesting community around easy to use tools and creative collaboration.
Technologically, this one’s pretty broad, but I’d definitely keep an eye on communication platforms like Slack, Twitch, and all of the tools being made for Collaborative Creation. With all of these readily at hand, it’s never been easier to create things digitally, and creating is the better part of learning. So I expect to see the “Glitch of Blank” and the “Lambda of Blank” for many other fields start to coalesce in 2019.
Creative Collaboration
Glitch (mention #3!) is also a great example of an exciting trend that’s really begun to pick up steam in 2018. In the past year, we’ve seen a swath of real-time collaborative creation platforms start to hit their stride. Glitch, repl.it, a similar real-time collaborative IDE; Notion, a self-billed “all in one workspace” ; and Figma, the recent startup darling hell-bent on making collaborative design and prototyping easy and fun all seem to have arrived at precisely the same time. Since powerful reactive-state web apps have started to dominate our workflows, it’s now fairly trivial to have a whole team click a link and start building together in real time, completely independent of geography. It’s easy to see how they’re spreading like wildfire.
From a technology perspective, I think React, Redux, GraphQL, and Websockets have all played a huge part in making these kinds of tools not only more stable and faster to use, but also easier to iterate on and experiment with new ways of doing work.
All this seems close to fulfilling the long-standing promise of computers fully freeing us from the burden of co-location. But they all have, so far, forgone one fundamental problem: Communication. Sure, they all have built in chat à la Google Docs, but there’s a big gulf between chat threads and real communication.
Communication
At the root of many of our digital woes is the fact that our tools, as they’re designed today, depersonalize and decontextualize our attempts at real communication. At its most benign, this leaves us frequently miscommunicating. At its worst, it allows for a vector of easy abuse. Take for example a comedy of errors that transpired on Twitter earlier this Spring, when food writer Helen Rosner tweeted about her use of a hair dryer to prep a chicken for roasting.
Twitter was first quick to strip the context that Helen was only drying the chicken in preparation for roasting, and began the immediate dunk cycle on the “dumb woman trying to cook a chicken with a hair dryer.” Most of the dunks were misinformed, not necessarily malevolent, but the insidious and omnipresent “dumb woman” meme fanned the fire, and soon this otherwise innocuous tweet had its own news cycle, receiving coverage from Fox News, the New York Post, and even the Today Show. The key thing to take away here (other than “sexism is everywhere and insanely toxic”) is that Helen described exactly what she was trying to do in the original tweet.
Social media is reactive. Designers at Twitter, Facebook, and the rest have decided that it’s far more important for us to see any associated images than it is to have full context. So we glance, we ad lib glibly, and we move on. It’s too easy to forget the person on the other side. Algorithms on these sites skew perspective and hide agenda. Even Slack’s firehose makes it impossible to follow along and really understand what’s trying to be said. And while emoji has grown into a nearly complete language used precisely to preserve the emotional context devoid in the words on our screens, it’s still a partial solution at best.
In looking for insight into why so much digital communication leaves us unfulfilled, I stumbled into a body of work that helped codify the reason for me. Alan Alda’s “If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?”, discusses how his foundation, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, uses improv training to improve face-to-face communication. At the root of these exercises is the strengthening of the speaker’s emotional expression and intuition. He talks at length about how real communication, the kind that leads to genuine understanding, is primarily about how we feel. With that in mind, it’s easy to see how digital interaction can feel vapid and overwhelming at the same time. None of our tools as they exist today explicitly strive to convey how we (or anyone else) feel. Our emotional expression defaults on our ability as amateur authors, and often to emotional hieroglyphs like emoji and memes. But we’re so early in even understanding the consequences of emotionally atonal communication that we’re only starting to see experimentation in domains where the pressure is strongest and the problem most obvious.
Talent-crunched tech companies looking to remote work as a panacea for affordable hiring have run head-first into the miscommunications and misalignments that can creep into teamwork when locked into the tools we have today. Companies like Range have identified real communication and preserving emotional context as being a critical to good work (especially remote work), and have started to chip away at the problem with a set of tools for better more communicative project management. But as our social and professional networks become more fully decentralized, the preservation of context, emotional and otherwise, will have to move to the forefront of tech’s priorities. I think things will start to move in that direction in 2019.
Unfortunately, this is one of those good old-fashioned people problems to which there is no extant technical solution. At least, not yet. But I’ll keep you posted.
Predictive Creation
Last but not least, I think we’re going to see Collaborative Creation, Communication, and machine learning bleed together into a new focus: Predictive Creation. Lightweight and nascent examples include Gmail’s notoriously awkward predictive replies and Photoshop’s awe-inspiring content aware fill. As data lakes grow and collaboration platforms accrue more deep insight into how things are created, they’ll start to dynamically provide recommendations, improvements, and even underlying infrastructure to abstract away complexity.
The end result will be a whole new class of tools that provide would-be-consumers with enough support to create satisfying, professional-grade art of any kind. It starts with Snapchat filters, autotune, and Portrait Mode, but in 2019 it’s headed for our graphic design, game design, 3D art, programming, cooking, craftwork, and more. The 2020’s are going to see a creative revolution to rival any before it, and I, for one, am extremely hype.
Summation
In 2019, we’re all going to be pulling together to try to right at least a few of the wrongs our industry has perpetrated over the past few years. But, as Jacque Cousteau said, “we are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.”
We’ll address not only the injustices brought on by our work, but also the underlying causes for them in the first place. We’ll open our eyes a bit more to the importance of emotion and expression. We’ll embrace the fun and the novel and the mirrors in which we see ourselves reflected. We’ll pull together and build the next set of tools that will empower us to better our lot and that of the planet as a whole.
There’s a kind of pain we all feel when we collectively come to a realization that things have changed. I’ve certainly felt it this year. For those who hadn’t seen it coming, there’s shock. For those who did; frustration. But that pain, that hopelessness does crack — and through it we’ll see a way to becoming a little better, for tomorrow and every day after.
So here’s to 2019, a year that’s certain to be unlike any other in this beautiful weird journey.
