The Tech Community has Created the Most Powerful Online Echo Chamber
The next time someone in tech acts like the cultural underdog, don’t believe them.
There has been plenty of talk about technology lately. Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s minds. Crypto and the metaverse was a thing that came (and went) in the past few years. A tech CEO and Twitter troll is now the Internet’s biggest celebrity. These topics are connected. To understand how, we must first understand echo chambers and how they impact culture in today’s internet. Then, we can look into the most powerful echo chamber, and how public conversation is dictated by it.
What are echo chambers?
I’ve written a fair bit about the echo chambers that have been popularized by the last decade of algorithmic social media feeds. In both positive and negative ways, they have begun to take a toll on society.
An echo chamber is a phenomenon where individuals predominantly encounter opinions and ideas that align with and bolster their pre-existing beliefs. This occurs due to the continuous circulation of these ideas within a closed-off environment, which largely excludes alternative perspectives and counterarguments. There is a bit of a correlation between echo chambers and mimetic theory, but that’s a story for another time.
Echo chambers are interesting in the social media age because those who excel within an echo chamber often become its representatives thanks to algorithms. That’s because the more popular you become with your ideological peers, the more likely that your social content reaches those outside of the echo chamber. This is usually when everyone starts to actually challenge your echo chamber’s opinion, and it’s where Twitter’s most famous dunks often take place. It’s a bad system. One that makes us lazier, more angry and less collaborative.
On Wikipedia: Yes, I reference and link to Wikipedia unironically. My professors would be ashamed. Frankly, it's the best jumping off point if you’re interested in learning more about a topic. It’s not perfect, but isn’t it the best way to start learning more about something? Moving on!
How infamous tech hype cycles are a demonstration of cultural power.
Today, let’s talk about the echo chamber that started it all. Tech Twitter, for lack of a better term, is a loose community of investors, founders and early adopters who have been on the forefront of Internet developments over the last 15 years. It actually started before Twitter, dating back to the events before the great Dot Com Crash. This echo chamber has its stars, its villains, its fans, and they regularly engage with other communities. However, their influence extends far beyond Twitter.
Lately, they have begun to drive a lot of political and cultural discussion. You can tell that by the recent dominance of the artificial intelligence conversation. ChatGPT has the fastest growing user base ever. Every industry is thinking or discussing how AI will or won’t disrupt their way of life. Tech evangelicals (and skeptics) have been able to captivate the media these past few weeks. Whether you are pro-AI, anti-AI or simply confused about AI, the technologists are driving the conversation.
This is another in a line of great tech hype cycles. From Steve Jobs to Sam Bankman-Fried. The internet to the metaverse. Theranos to Tesla. We have been in a fever dream of technological development, hype and disillusion. None of this would have been possible without the tech echo chamber and their ability to impact other cultural groups.
Everyone wants to feel like the underdog, even if they’re not.
I have been lurking in tech circles for some time, and if you counted the pros and cons, I’d come out resoundingly as pro-technology. My main critique of tech is that they like to position themselves as the underdog agitators of institutions, the media and other “wordcels” (long story), without realizing that they are at the top of the financial and cultural food chain. This underdog mentality is common within all kinds of echo chambers, but given tech’s power over our daily lives, it’s particularly discernable.
Most of this is based on the community’s ability to create, experience or adapt to rising technologies faster than the average person. This created a network effect that still makes them powerful today. Here are a few ways that could have played out:
Maybe they invested (or knew someone else who invested) in the platforms where most of society spends its time these days
Maybe they worked in San Francisco at some point and saw local advertising for the startup that ended up taking over the world, allowing them to invest in their stock early
Maybe they have common usernames like @jason or @paulg, because they got a chance to reserve their name before the rest of us
Maybe they are rank-and-file tech workers who simply have a rooting financial stake in the industry’s success
Maybe they are investors who are looking for the highest risk-to-return in the marketplace
Maybe they are an early adopter who grew up as a hardcore user and now they feel intrinsically linked to technology’s success
Imagine building a club, the hottest club in town, and then acting like you are the outsiders who don’t match the vibe and won’t be let in. That would be strange, right? The tech echo chamber features some of the most prominent VIPs of our online discourse, whether they want to admit it or not. They are internet natives and pioneers who have effectively pulled all of us into their club. We all love it. Our lives are better for it. But also worse in a lot of ways.
Disparities are created because of this phenomenon. Media companies are not digital natives and neither are politicians or activists. The same goes for a vast majority of average citizens. The further away you are from the tech echo chamber, the slower your adoption of technology often is. This Internet thing is newer for us than it is for the tech community, meaning that they are more powerful than they realize.
How algorithmic capital impacts your perception of technology and those who create it.
I grew up in a home full of conflict and arguments. Online games, chat rooms and communities were a place of comfort that have an impact on me to this day. I regularly cite technology as having a profoundly positive impact on my life. But every group is vulnerable to the dangers of getting too high on its own cultural supply. Elon’s twitter feed, as an example, should suffice. The tech community is not a monolith, and even for me, it has gotten a little out of hand lately.
The tech industry is vulnerable to echo chambers and their negative symptoms, but so is everyone else. What’s not like everyone else, is the fact that they also have a financial interest in dominating their echo chamber. Lest we forget, venture capitalists make up a sizable chunk of this community. Those who get the hype often get the funding, which then increases the likelihood of them turning that hype into reality. Echo chambers are a problem among democrats, republicans, academics, basketball fans and writers, but the investment angle really takes things up a notch.
Some of the most intriguing tech thinkers I’ve followed are skeptical of these hype cycles and echo chambers. Jaron Lanier or Tristan Harris is a fine example, as is the Convivial Society. But they are not invited to all the parties. More importantly, their caution is not the kind of content that succeeds in the echo chamber I’ve described.
If you are not a member of the tech community you will not know about tech skeptics that exist within the community. Those aiming these tools towards a more sustainable and human-centric future simply don’t climb the algorithmic rankings in the same way. Some of them find platforms through other means, as the media crowd grows skeptical of tech, but this is minuscule in impact compared to those who are powerful within the echo chamber.
This is how the rest of the world develops a negative opinion of “tech bros” or “crypto bros” or “VC bros.” Those are the most bombastic folks within the echo chambers and therefore the only ones they see on their feed. They also become more likely to succeed financially when they are able to make a name for themselves in the echo chamber.
How technological dispersion threatens the tech echo chamber, in a good way.
Imagine being a farmer, and not caring about where you get your seeds or water from. That would be like not taking a curious and active role in technology today. Tech dominates our lives, but it’s becoming quite popular to be anti-tech, especially in progressive circles. This is dangerous for a few reasons, but mostly because this is the exact moment that the power of technology should be dispersing away this echo chamber where it originated.
There are also plenty of reasons to be optimistic rather than pessimistic. Tech is more diverse than ever, giving us more opportunities to experience software created with the help of unique backgrounds and skill sets. The rest of the world is realizing that the Internet is a great equalizer of talent. AI and no-code tools are actually making it easier for anyone’s technological vision to be realized at a software level. Is this really the time to code tech as right wing or avoid it entirely? This is right when things can get really interesting.
Calling out the tech echo chamber for what it is can help you balance its strengths and weaknesses. For example, why has tech mostly stagnated as talented engineers work on dozens of different delivery apps or social media companies? They have a financial interest in driving hype cycles, which exacerbates the inherent echo chamber problems such as groupthink. If ride-sharing apps are getting the funding, that’s where you want to be! It’s a modern day gold rush to build tools that have immense potential. But it’s also easy for innovation to stall when it’s difficult to break from the herd and be rewarded.
Technology has vastly improved society and been a disruptor of many things that were previously stagnant or malignant. It is a democratizing and decentralizing force, which I believe is a good thing if everyone realizes that they have a role to play in its development. This is precisely what will limit the power of the tech echo chamber, to the betterment of technology itself.