Sprinting into the abyss.
Sprinting into the abyss. All doing, no thinking. That's the modern tech industry. "Aren't we heading into the abyss?" "Yep, but look how boldly we're sprinting!"
Topic: tech industry
54 chunks · 38 episodes
3.1x burst in 2025 Q4
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Peak quarter intensity across the topic's active span. Higher values mean attention was concentrated into a shorter stretch rather than spread evenly over time.
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- tech industry appears in 54 chunks across 38 episodes, from 2023-10-09 to 2026-07-27.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 10/13/25 (2025-10-13), with 4 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with Christopher Alexander, late stage, and silicon valley, while by chunk count it sits between Openclaw and social media; its yearly rank moved from #40 in 2023 to #22 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
The tech industry is Goodhart's law-ing society.
The tech industry is Goodhart's law-ing society. Because it's not thinking through the implications of its actions. It doesn't believe in the collective, only the indi...
A techlash perspective: "do the benefits of this technology outweigh the societal harm that will come from concentrating even more wealth and power in the hands of these jerks?"
...and power in the hands of these jerks?" This perspective has been earned by the tech industry in the last decade. It's a harm the industry might never come back from.
Tech industry conferences often trot out the most recent lottery winner as though they're some wise oracle.
Tech industry conferences often trot out the most recent lottery winner as though they're some wise oracle.
This satire video announcing Vibes from the Daily Show is provocative, deliriously funny, and depressing.
...d depressing. "Eat your slop, piggies." This is the way that the world sees the tech industry: hollow, cynical, extractive. The tech industry of today has earned this reputation. All action, no reflection. We can do better. We must do better.
A recipe for powerful growth: action and reflection.
...s and Bobs process is my weekly reflection, and I couldn't live without it. The tech industry today often does all action, no reflection. Academia does all reflection, no action. You need both, in balance.
Leverage + acting/no-reflecting is a recipe for disaster.
...ster. When there's no reflecting, there's no thinking through implications. The tech industry has significant leverage, and also culturally too much focus on acting vs reflecting. As an industry we need to mix back in the 20% of time on reflec...
Most of the challenge of making software is tailoring it to work for specific people.
...rove it is no longer a moat like it has been for decades. The foundation of the tech industry's business models.
Stephen Levy: I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley.
... I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong. It's striking to see how far the tech industry has shifted in this late stage era. I don't recognize the industry that used to inspire me. Can there be any doubt that the modern tech industry has ...
Someone this week described today's tech industry as having reached an equilibrium that isn't even evil in an interesting way, but in a sad, banal way.
Someone this week described today's tech industry as having reached an equilibrium that isn't even evil in an interesting way, but in a sad, banal way. It's not even grand ambitions any more, it's ju...
In the tech industry we talk about "Software Patterns."
In the tech industry we talk about "Software Patterns." Very few know about the Gang of Four book that popularized the term. Even fewer know that the reason we call them ...
Most of the things the tech industry builds are just CRUD apps.
Most of the things the tech industry builds are just CRUD apps. Anything more complex is science, it takes an order of magnitude more effort.
A single metric can never capture the real world nuance.
...xt, and should have long-term alignment and responsibility for the outcome. The tech industry seems relatively naive in this domain. The tech industry tends toward "figure out a single objective metric and simply make it go up." There have bee...
I can't stop thinking about this meme.
...u're trying to solve intractable human problems with technology" It sums up the tech industry's approach to the nuance of human / social problems. One ply thinking that misjudges the nuance and complexity by an order of magnitude or more.
The tech industry deeply believes in bottom-up meritocracy.
The tech industry deeply believes in bottom-up meritocracy. Good ideas can come from even junior engineers. I wonder how much of this culture is downstream of the hist...
Scale makes systems inhuman.
...to rely on quantitative signals to scale. Those can't be whole and nuanced. The tech industry is fundamentally about scale. LLMs allow qualitative nuance at quantitative scale, which means for the first time we could make human scaled systems....
If you have tons of power you should have tons of responsibility.
...] The emergent effects of tech are more important than the tech itself. But the tech industry doesn't think about emergence. Social media, crypto, etc… the goals were good, but the emergent effects were treated like a "whoopsie!" We must do be...
Which is easier, engineers to become subject matter experts, or subject matter experts becoming engineers?
...becoming engineers?[gr] With vibecoding maybe the latter is more important? The tech industry has a baked in assumption of "of course people with a CS degree are at the top of the totem pole and always will be". But the tech industry as a whol...
I find the term "users" that is common in the tech industry to not be a great term.
I find the term "users" that is common in the tech industry to not be a great term. It feels like talking about people who are addicted to a drug. "users" and "consumers" are not about humanity, it's about the...
Play is easy in abundance.
...wth makes it easier to have an infinite mindset. This is one of the reasons the tech industry historically cared less about titles. Everything was growing, so why sweat it? More mature contexts, like on the east coast, or academia, are way mor...