A spoken reflection by Precursor Ventures on whether technology remains a force for good. The speaker traces a shift over their career: an earlier widespread belief that tech positively equalized and connected people (citing the Arab Spring and Google’s mission), moving toward skepticism after ethical controversies (notably Google’s actions regarding China) and the deepening ties between tech and defense.
When I read it, it made me remember that, you know, I've been working in tech for most of my career and I would say there have been like two big changes I've noticed. One is, I think for most of my career, probably the first 2/3, most people are like, tech is kind of, I wouldn't say universally, but generally a force for good. It makes the world better. It brings people together. Whether that was true or not, that was the belief was that tech is like this equalizing, positive force. And that, like, I think a lot of people were like, proud to be like, oh, yeah, I think back to the Arab Spring a long time ago. Facebook is helping all these people connect and know. Google's organizing all the world's information. And maybe like, for me, the first moment in my career where I was like, maybe tech has a more complicated relationship with morality was, you know, I was at Google when the don't be evil stuff happened with China. And a lot of people were like, well, how do we reconcile who we say we are with the business demands of provide? And that was like, obviously a very challenging decision for the company. And then you had all the comments about little should tech work with defense. It seems quaint now that that was even a thing when you think about how big defense tech and the military industrial complex relationship with tech has gone back to where it started in the beginning of time. We're very back.
