I’ve been writing about the technology
I've never been a gadget nerd, but I also remember vividly the first time I tried the original iPod and YouTube and wondered why these magical things hadn't existed before. And when I moved to the Bay Area about six years ago as a technology journalist, I was struck by the feeling that this was the only remaining American industry not experiencing an existential crisis. Tech folks tend to be optimistic about what they do and the future in general, and that feeling was contagious.
Now, though, I'm not so sure. This has been a year of reckoning with the extreme downsides of technology. The same qualities that made the internet and tech so thrilling for a couple of decades — eliminating gatekeepers, making information instantaneous and connecting people with different points of view — now sometimes seem more threatening than alluring.
