Seven and a Half Reasons to Be Optimistic About Tech in 2018

A few weeks ago, my colleague Shira Ovide, a longtime tech reporter and columnist, said what many of us have been thinking: Silicon Valley sucks these days. “I’ve fallen out of love with technology,” Shira wrote, noting that this felt like the year when much of America began to seriously confront the downsides of the new economy. “The same qualities that made the internet 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.”

The novelty of social media has given way to concerns about misinformation. Smartphone mania has become tougher to distinguish from outright addiction. Smart speakers are convenient, but could also double as scarily effective surveillance devices. The robots are going to take our jobs. Oh, and some of the guys responsible for these problems increasingly seem like a bunch of misogynistic creeps.