This yr in tech, an excessive amount of occurred and little or no of it made sense. It was like we have been being managed by a random quantity generator that may dictate the whims of the tech trade, resulting in a number of “greatest information tales of the yr” occurring over the course of a month, all fully disconnected from each other.
I can’t cease excited about an excellent tweet I noticed final month, which encapsulated the absurdity of the yr — it was one thing alongside the traces of, “Meta laid off 11,000 individuals and it’s solely the third greatest tech story of the week.” Usually, a social media large shedding 13% of its workforce would simply be the week’s prime story, however this was the second when FTX went bankrupt and everybody was impersonating companies on Twitter as a result of by some means Elon Musk didn’t assume by way of how issues would go horribly fallacious if anybody might purchase a blue verify. Oh, good occasions.
Once I say it seems like we’re dwelling in a simulation, what I imply is that generally, I hear in regards to the newest tech information and really feel like somebody threw some phrases in a hat, picked just a few, and tried to attach the dots. After all, that’s not what’s actually occurring. However in January, would you have got believed me if I instructed you that Twitter proprietor Elon Musk polled customers to determine that he would unban Donald Trump?
These absurd occasions in tech have penalties. Crypto collapses like FTX’s chapter and the UST scandal have harmed precise individuals who invested important sums of cash into one thing that they believed to be funding. It’s humorous to consider the way you’d react ten years in the past if somebody instructed you that Meta (oh yeah, that’s what Fb known as now) is dropping billions of {dollars} each quarter to construct digital actuality expertise that nobody appears to need. However these administration selections are usually not a joke for the staff who misplaced their jobs due to these decisions.
The place does this depart us? We’re in a second in tech historical past the place nothing is simply too absurd to be doable. That’s each inspiring and horrifying. It’s doable for a workforce of Amazon success heart staff in Staten Island to win a union election, efficiently advocating for themselves within the face of large adversity. It’s additionally doable for Elon Musk to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
AI expertise like Steady Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile steadiness between innovation and horror. You may make stunning artworks in seconds, and you may also endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You’ll be able to ask an AI chatbot to show you about historical past, however there’s no technique to know if its response is factually correct (until you do additional analysis, wherein case, you may’ve simply completed your individual analysis to start with).
However maybe a part of the rationale why AI turbines have garnered such mainstream enchantment is that they virtually really feel pure to us. This yr’s tech information feels so weird that they may as nicely have been generated by ChatGPT.
Or perhaps actuality is definitely stranger than something an AI might provide you with. I requested ChatGPT to write down some headlines about tech information for me, and it got here up with these snoozers (along with some factually inaccurate headlines, which I omitted for the sake of journalism):
- “Apple’s iOS 15 replace brings main enhancements to iPhones and iPads”
- “Amazon’s new line of autonomous supply robots causes controversy”
- “Intel proclaims new line of processors with superior safety features”
Fairly boring! Listed here are some precise actual issues that occurred in tech this yr:
- Tony the Tiger made his debut as a VTuber.
- Somebody claimed to be a laid off Twitter worker named Rahul Ligma, and a herd of reporters didn’t get the joke, inadvertently which means that I needed to clarify the “ligma” joke on like 4 totally different tech podcasts.
- Three individuals bought arrested for working a Membership Penguin clone.
- One of many Division of Justice’s predominant suspects in a $3.6 billion crypto cash laundering scheme is an entrepreneur-slash-rapper named Razzlekhan.
- The brand new Pokémon sport has a line of dialogue with the phrase “cheugy.”
- Donald Trump dropped an NFT assortment.
- A nasty Twitter characteristic replace impacted the inventory of a pharmaceutical firm.
- Elon Musk’s best rival is a College of Central Florida sophomore.
- FTC chair Lina Khan stated that Taylor Swift did extra to coach Gen Z about antitrust legislation than she ever might.
- Meta is promoting a $1,499 VR headset for use for distant work.
- The UK Treasury made a Discord account to share public bulletins however was instantly spammed with individuals utilizing emoji reactions to make soiled jokes (and talking of the UK, there have been three totally different Prime Ministers since September.)
These are unusual occasions. If the principles are made up and the factors don’t matter, let’s at the least hope that if the absurdity continues into 2023, the tech information is extra amusing than dangerous. I need extra Chris Pratt voicing dwell motion Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that an excessive amount of to ask?
