In the next part In a few decades, virtually every financial, social, and governmental institution in the world will be completely transformed by one small but incredibly powerful invention: the blockchain.
Do you believe that? Or are you one of those people who think the blockchain and crypto boom is just one big, decades-long scam — the bastard child of the Dutch tulip bubble, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and the The odd approach of the free internet? More likely, you – like me – are not in these two extremes. Rather, you’re yearning for someone to show you how to think about problems intelligently and nuancedly instead of always falling into the binary trap.
Binaries have been on my mind a lot since I took over as editor at WIRED last March. That’s because we’re at what feels like an inflection point in recent technology history, when various binaries that have long been taken for granted are being called into question.
When WIRED was founded in 1993, it was the bible of techno-utopianism. We’ve documented and defended unbeatable inventions that we think will reinvent the world; All they need is to be liberated. Our covers feature brilliant, treacherous, visionary – and mostly wealthy, white and male – who are shaping the future, reshaping human nature and make everyone’s life more productive and fun. They are bolder, more creative, richer and cooler than you; in fact, they lived in the future. By reading WIRED, we suggest, you can join them there!
If that optimism was binary 0, since then the mood has turned to binary 1. Today, a lot of media coverage focuses on the damage caused by the activity of the tech industry. It was given to us Tahrir Square, but also Xinjiang; the blog world, but also manosphere; limitless opportunities of Long tail, but also the constant precariousness of gig economy; mRNA vaccine, but also Crispy babies. WIRED did not shy away from addressing these issues. But they forced us – and me in particular, as an up-and-coming editor – to ponder the question: What does it mean to have a WIRED, a publication born to celebrate technology? an era when technology is often demonized?
For me, the answer started with binary rejection. Both optimism and pessimism about technology miss the point. The lesson of the past 30 years is not that we are wrong to think that technology can make the world a better place. Instead, we were wrong to think that technology itself was the solution — and now we are wrong to see technology as the problem. It is not only possible but normal, for a technology that simultaneously brings benefits and harms. A hype cycle that creates billionaires quickly and leaves a trail of failed companies after it emerges can also lay the groundwork for a lasting structural change (exhibition A: case) first dotcom bankruptcy). An online platform that creates community and has helped citizens overthrow dictators (Facebook) can also trap people into conformism and sectarianism and become a tool for oppression. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, an intelligent person must be able to keep opposing ideas in their head simultaneously and still be active.
