Dear Tech Culture

You don’t matter

Dear Tech Culture,

I hate to tell y’all this, and I know you’ll argue and say I’m lying, but here it is:

YOU DON’T MATTER TO US

Really, I’m sorry, but I had to say it. I know, I know, you guys make everything we use. It’s at your parties, and startup events, and Google Glass banning bars that our favorite apps and hardware were thought up.

Sure you gave us Uber, which by the way just came to my city, Orlando, and probably won’t work. You gave us Tinder, never used it, but I hear everybody in New York and San Francisco is using it. Hell you even gave us Snapchat, which is pretty popular, I don’t really see the point an MMS is easier and cheaper for me. But let’s be honest here, those are the flukes. Most of your products and your companies fail.

And we don’t really care. You’re that obnoxious friend that keeps telling us to watch different movies, except he really doesn’t have an understanding of our taste, so usually we watch it for five minutes and then go back to How I Met Your Mother. It’s old and comfortable and it gives us what we want.

Harsh I know, but it’s the truth. Now you have your own little group, and you shout back and forth, and support each other, and say how you think you have the answers to the world’s problems. Except you don’t. You make computer applications. Sometimes you make one that’s really popular and become a millionaire when Google, or Facebook, or Yahoo, or Amazon buys it up. But it doesn’t fix anything in the world. It just distracts people. It lets them play a game, or find their next one night stand, or is a different take on an industry that already exists.

I’m sure there are some of you who are working on world changing ideas, good luck! I really hope those MOOCs take off. But for the most part it seems like your fixing the problems in your own lives.

Now, y’all talk a lot about being disruptive, well I’m all for disruption. How about you put that money you’ve earned into disrupting the cycle of poverty in American cities. In fact you wouldn’t even have to spend a lot of money, just enough to do some market research and find out what people really need.

I bet you’ll find it’s not a new dating app, or a way of secretly sending text messages. I bet they probably need a cheap way to get to work, or reliable childcare so they don’t have to worry about their kids, or even a way to find work. But I’m not in their demographic so I’m just guessing.

But I bet with that market research and all the very smart people you have you’ll come up with a solution. I bet you could figure out a way to monetize it, too. And all without selling personal data to larger corporations.

Now I know this hurt, and I am very sorry, but somebody had to tell you. Your heads have been getting pretty big lately.

Regards,

Steven