Jon hypothesizes that the once obscure tech industry is now becoming synonymous with Wall Street in its popularity and, just like Wall Street, the nerds, troublemakers, and misfits who started it all are now being phased out by the so-called “pretty people.” What was once a basement full of dweebs and mathletes is now the penthouse suite of Mark Zuckerberg wannabes.
“Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way.”[1]
Unfortunately, what has ended up happening—and continues to happen—are these kinds of cookie-cutter startups with the so-called “pretty people” creating basic versions of the same concepts that inspired them to begin with: Yo app vs. messenger, Lyft vs. Uber, Place vs. Facebook. What’s lacking here is the imagination and drive that we used to find among the rebels and geeks of not so long ago.
You can almost hear the sound of Harvard dropouts frantically tapping away on their laptops, building the next big app. It seems like everyone has a startup nowadays—and more just keep popping up! In the not-so-distant future, there won’t be anymore tech junkies left for hire to fix your computer; pretty soon, there won’t even be a computer left to fix (if you’d believe what Microsoft has in store for us).
Between Genecoin and cryptocurrency, tracking chips and the Higgs boson particle being predicted by Homer Simpson, it’s becoming clear that humanity is on the verge of something—something BIG. Life is becoming a single-serving, custom-created, subscription-based experience. Everything we once knew about technology is radically changing as we speak: what you knew five minutes ago is obsolete; what you know now is already outdated. We’re no longer able to live in the moment; instead, we’re constantly on the lookout for the next Tumblr or Etsy.
The time is now for the tech industry to get back to its roots. Geeks, freethinkers and tech enthusiasts unite! We need you and all of your radical, forward-thinking ideas to help dig us out of this money-hungry, “pretty” establishment that the tech industry has become. You are our salvation. You are our future. You are—dare I say it—our only hope.
[1] Evans, Jon. “Beware The Pretty People”. TechCrunch. 28 Feb. 2015. Web. 11 March 2016.