That Was The Year in Tech: When Nothing Happened (except Everything, Everywhere, All at Once)
That was the year in tech. When nothing and yet everything happened. A year betwixt and between, simultaneously revolutionary and uneventful. That's the ironic conclusion Keith Teare and I reach about Silicon Valley in 2025. It's as if the AI revolution is changing the world without us fully noticing. AI has become electricity—ubiquitous and essential, yet barely noticed. So what will happen on the tech front (or not happen) in 2026? Will it be another year in which nothing happened (except everything, everywhere, all at once). Or are we reaching 1789 or 1917 or 1989—a grand historical year where the logjam breaks and tech formally takes over the world? A true end and beginning of history. The first real year of the tech 21st century.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
J. Bradford DeLong: How Joe Biden's "Supply Side Progressivism" Has Actually Made 2022 A Good Economic Year For Most Americans
Allison Gilbert on From Colleen Hoover to New York's New Wage Transparency Law: The Good News For Women About 2022
David Kirkpatrick: The Year That Elon Musk Became Vladimir Putin: How We Lost All Our Moral Illusions About Big Tech in 2022
Alejandro Crawford: How to Empower Truly Rebellious Entrepreneurs to Do Good in the World
Katherine Stewart: Why American Religious Nationalism is on the Rise in 2022—and How to Confront It in 2023
Mary Annaïse Heglar: The Case for Climate Reparations: Our Environmental Crisis Isn't a "Villainless Crime"
Orville Schell on China in 2022: A Crack in Xi Jinping's Leninist Authoritarianism?
Joshua Browder: Should We Celebrate Technology Which Enables the Disruption of Local Government?
Ewan Morrison on Against Nihilism: Why Belief in Anything is Better Than Nothing
Keith Teare on a Crypto Winter and the Dawn of the AI Age: How Silicon Valley Will Remember 2022
Weili Dai: How AI and the Metaverse Will Combine to Create a More "Efficient" Future
Maurice Saatchi: Finally Revealed… Why Some of Us Go to Heaven and Why Some of Us End Up in Hell
Stephen Bezruchka: Why America Needs a "Sputnik Moment" To Reform Its Radically Inegalitarian Healthcare System