Opinion: The Internet just turned 30. We’re celebrating with anti-tech fervor.
By Catherine Rampell Catherine Rampell Columnist covering economics, public policy, politics and culture Email Bio Follow Columnist March 15 at 4:38 PM Happy 30th birthday, World Wide Web. Who knew that we’d be celebrating this three-decade tech milestone with such a frenzy of anti-tech fervor?
This cultural adoration of all things “tech” — and “tech” grew to encompass almost any company supposedly in the business of “disruption” — was ubiquitous. The sycophancy of the tech press defied parody. Hollywood, too, lionized the founder-genius, the socially awkward kid who finally got his social due . And politicians went to Silicon Valley to kiss the rings of these flip-flop-and-free-T-shirt-wearing, newly zillionaired nerds, in hope of coaxing a few pennies from their Venmo accounts.
What happened? In some ways, anything hyped as high as the Silicon Valley fairy tale was bound to face a reputational fall eventually. But the blemishes driving that backlash were also plentiful, and varied. The list goes on, and the outcome is plain. A sector once seen as a bunch of plucky underdogs has become viewed by many as a greedy, parasitic monolith, indifferent to its effects on democracy, civility, human rights. Or, in any event, it was recognized for what it was: a sector at least as inclined to bad behavior as any that came before it, except it exists within an overmatched regulatory environment that has been ill-equipped to impose consequences.
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