Brian Merchant: How tech is changing LA — and how LA is changing tech
Is tech OK? It's not just the mass layoffs. It's that, to an alien observer, many of the most hyped ideas emerging from America's vaunted tech industry over the last few years would seem untethered from reality, if not outright unhinged.
Facebook renamed itself Meta and pitched us the metaverse, insisting we'll all soon want to immerse ourselves in a giant pixelated 3-D cartoon where no one has legs. So-called web3 startups enlisted celebrities to sell us on NFTs and blockchain technology built to prove we owned doodles of depressed monkeys. Crypto companies proposed we abandon a regulated financial system for a freewheeling digital one overflowing with volatility and fraud.
Some unhinged-ness is good, you might argue. Where would civilization be if we didn't take some big technological swings? Making vast amounts of information easily searchable for billions of people, and then making it accessible through a screen that fits in your pocket — all that once seemed, . But something feels different this time.
