Letter #6
Don't you think you're broken?
Dear San Francisco,
OK, we’ve all made mistakes. Chosen the wrong partners. Stayed with them even when we should’ve known better. Waist-deep in a bad relationship. Water still rising fast.
But after the tech sector showed its colors as a volatile partner – remember 2000-2001? – why did you let its choking vines keep creeping north to extend their grasp to you? Let its influence rearrange your skyline and sidewalks with an onslaught of commercial skyscrapers with open-floor offices and a rash of luxury condos with “garden levels” three stories up, private theaters with stadium seats, and rooftop dog parks equipped with synthetic turf engineered to facilitate easy disposal of the contributions of tech workers’ mini-me dogs on quick piss and shit breaks at noon and night? Greenlight redevelopment to enable transformation that’s been more chaotic than rapid?
Maybe you got carried away. Maybe tech’s starting blocks crouch felt like it fit with your counter-culture lean. Both cover going boldly and doing whatever you want. Or maybe there’s something about you that makes you an easy mark for a too-good-to-be-true, or at least too-good-to-be-true-for-long scheme. Remember the Gold Rush?
Anyway, how could you fall for a line like “Move fast and break things?” That’s worse than “I’ll call you in the morning!” Did you really think tech would propel San Francisco to unimagined glory, damn the torpedoes, and without consequences? Talk about the triumph of hope over experience. It’s no stretch to say the company known for the catchphrase helped break friendship itself by moving too fast.
Not that I’m pushing “Sit still and accept mediocrity.” I know you’ve always been at the forefront of innovation, and a place of transformation and growth for so many. Including me. So, I know you need to keep striving, reaching, metamorphosizing to … be you. And for the record …. The Yellow Pages? Taxis? The travel racket? All worth breaking.
But you’re more than a business model, right? You’re a place with people. Did you lose sight of that, and sell yourself too cheap? I’m talking about your very fabric. Who lives where, what they eat, how they vote, what they wear. All uprooted. And worse, homogenized. So, within the pursuit of progress, isn’t there a time to let things be? Or at least to stop and think?
And be honest: don’t you think you’re broken?
It’s been years since another tech titan south of you jettisoned “Don’t be evil” as its catchphrase. But you didn’t blink. Not then, and not since it’s turned nastier. No, you doubled down, and I’m worried you’re looking to quadruple down now, with your hopes for renewal pinned on AI.
Now, I’m not standing on Market Street screaming “End times” because of tech. (Yet.) Actually, I’m glad for tech to be part of the path ahead, a strand in your fabric going forward. I just don’t see AI as your savior. Why not? Two reasons.
First, don’t you think more toxic alpha male tech bros braying about funding rounds after private lessons with their Brazilian jiujitsu coaches, crumbs from $7 croissants in their neck beards and droplets of $9 kombuchas staining their ironic t-shirts might risk degrading the situation, versus improving it? I know, money talks: taxes, jobs, activity. But are you sure another dose of tech is the Rx for what ails you?
Second: you’ve never looked backwards to find your future. You’ve always broken with the past. Moved on to something new. Usually something bold that we never saw coming and can only explain in retrospect.
Let’s do that instead of returning to the scene of the crime. Anyway, think about it? And we can talk about it next time.
Until then ….