8 Overly Confident, Mostly Pessimistic Predictions About Tech in 2018

It was a very strange year for technology companies. They have become a “bipartisan whipping boy,” a new sexist institution, responsible for the muddying of the presidential election, “ripping apart the social fabric,” destroying a generation, and “hijacking people’s minds.”

And damn, they made a lot of money! Revenue was up. Profits were up. Share prices were way up, too. Every one of the big five—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon—delivered a more than 33 percent increase in their share prices. Almost all of the second-tier companies also had huge years. Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, Autodesk, HP, Dell, and Intel all saw their share prices rise more than 25 percent.

2017 Stock-Price Gains for the Big Five Tech Companies

These certainly feel like opposing trends. But who knows? I keep thinking that the rhetoric around the tech industry cannot get any darker while it continues to prosper,