“Vibes” have been a cultural through line of late, and let’s face it, in the last year or so, the vibes in tech have been…not great.
The early promise of tech solutions has given way to adverse realities
Remember when Uber and Lyft were an economic revolution in transportation? Now they’re a way to turn a $5 coffee downtown into a $50 coffee downtown.
Remember when AirBnB launched on the premise that anyone could offer vacation rentals? Turns out that’s now also a problem, for travelers, for renters, and for entire neighborhoods.
Facebook was supposed to bring us together, and we saw how that turned out. Twitter? Let’s not go there.
Remember when Google’s first page had more organic results than sponsored links? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
The list goes on. And on.
Meanwhile, the once-promising culture at the core of the tech industry has taken a decidedly dark turn, changing from an empowerment dynamic to a control dynamic. An industry born of optimism and possibility is now marked by palace coups, grim directives and weird manifestos.
The industry is also showing signs of hitting the boom-bust bottle one too many times. Fresh off the Web3 / blockchain / crypto fiasco, we have AI, which has far more promise, but is already building a similar reputation as a technology with a hype profile that far exceeds its use case.
It often feels like the humans are working for the tech tools, not the other way around
At the street level, it sometimes feels like the feared AI dystopia – humans captive to their new digital overlords – is in many ways already here:
- How many times have you had to click on a picture of a traffic light to prove to a robot that you’re not a robot?
- How many days have you wasted not adding new features or content to your website, but instead chasing bugs and security updates around like a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole?
- How much time have you spent searching through online dashboards and settings panels that are supposed to deliver insight and control, but instead confound and make you feel like you’ve been abandoned in an underground cave network? (Sound familiar, GA4?)
You can emerge having spent a whole day chasing your tech tail. Or a whole week. Or worse. That tail, my friend, is wagging the dog. It’s time to flip the script.
Reclaiming control: a wake-up call
Despite these vibes, a positive truth endures: Tech remains incredibly powerful, and that power is available to be put to work for you. Getting the outcomes you want requires ignoring the noise and doing two simple things:
- Staying focused on what you’re trying to do.
- Making best use of the tools available to you.
Ridiculously simple, right? That’s the exact point.
My reawakening to this basic fact (sometimes we need to be reminded, after all) happened with the simplest of projects: A largely volunteer effort to remake the website for Northwest Samoyed Rescue. The old site had aged out to the point where the only place the organization could easily post information about available dogs was on Facebook, applications were largely handled manually, and there was no viable way to accept donations online.
This is not a complex problem set. The ingredients we applied to solve it were WordPress, WP Engine, Pawlytics and the contributions of Northwest Samoyed Rescue, Mandy Gao, Kassidy Buslach, Trevor Dodd and Collin Jensen.
The result, however, proved incredibly powerful. Northwest Samoyed Rescue is now able to feature dogs in a way that brings their personalities to life. Applications to adopt, foster or surrender a dog automatically capture all the information in a retrievable and sortable way. Donations are now accepted online and have increased dramatically. The website has made a massive difference.
With that reset of perspective, I’m now better able to see other areas where at Culture Foundry we’ve been able to flip the script, put the power of tech into the hands of our clients, and deliver positive, meaningful outcomes such as:
As the incisive Nikhil Suresh points out in his (warning: adult language) blistering rant about AI hype:
Consider the fact that most companies are unable to successfully develop and deploy the simplest… applications on time and under budget. This is a solved problem – with smart people who can collaborate and provide reasonable requirements, a competent team will knock this out of the park every single time, admittedly with some amount of frustration.
That’s a crucial point: Delivering meaningful progress with the power of tech for the great majority of scenarios is a solved problem, and one that takes human beings to be successful. You don’t work for the tools. The tools work for you.
“Vibes” may sound like an abstract concept, but vibes require a force to produce, and tacit acceptance (or complacency) to become normalized. A shift in a power center is no accident.
It’s time to reclaim that power and confidently flip the script. If a tool, platform, technology or team doesn’t have you feeling completely empowered to achieve the outcome you’re after, kick it right to the curb. If you do that yourself, more power to you. If you’re looking for some help and guidance along the way, we’re here to provide it.
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