Dear Tech: A letter to the deadbeat teenage son at the end of a tough year

This is what I like to see from the folks, a bit of gumption! Take some of that gumption, use it to learn a smidgeon about the technology you use every day, and steer it whichever way you want it to go! Take a look at those companies doing annoying crap, and compete against them!

Oh too hard for ya? Well by default that kind of means you're content to let someone else be in charge and to remain a hapless piece of passive audience meat, who takes whatever's dished-out to you. Though it would be nicer for everybody around you if you'd do that more quietly.

Help the homeless! Great idea! It should dovetail nicely with your current efforts. Wait what's that you say, that's tech's job? You're too busy making the Toyota payment and doing pottery in the basement? Too busy paying for a basement you don't need, in a subdivision nobody cares about, so you can do pottery in it?

Even so, it's good you're finally kicking tech out of the house. I didn't say anything that whole time you were spending every waking moment paying attention to tech, coddling tech, worshipping tech, making tech into the spoiled monster it is today. I just hope you can follow through. Your request for the WiFi instructions doesn't bode well, or indicate a lot of conviction, or speak much to your usefulness as a role model or a man. A real grown-up would say "no tech" and that would mean "no tech" and they wouldn't go asking for the WiFi instructions like a lil' bitch!

yeah, okay. as if it's possible for tech to be "kicked out" and "forced to get its shit together". reading this was awkward, I think it encourages looking at products or corporations as a single entity that should have a moral compass or sense of responsibility. if people want to ditch tech, fine, but I wish in these comparisons it'd at least be acknowledged that corporations mainly exist to make money. I suppose it would require a large amount of humility to do that though as it would also be admitting to succumbing to advertising, and being "tricked" into expecting "real life change and support" from a product, or something like that.

Thanks for posting this.

TL;DR: The "tech industry" as a general concept does things I don't like and I want everyone to know. Period.

I'm getting really tired of reading stuff like this - endless, tongue-in-cheek, vapid complaining, without any real solutions or call to action. Seemed to be a staple of 2017. I would also like to note how ironic it is for the media to complain about Facebook and Twitter propagating fake news when they're just as bad. For all the complaining about the tech industry, journalism seems just as morally deficient, but journalists are losing their credibility at a faster rate. Insult, meet injury.