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Tech Reporting Is More Negative Now Than in the Past (betanews.com)
Wayne Williams, writing for BetaNews: A new study finds that tech reporting is generally more pessimistic now than in the past, and for two very different reasons. The new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and based on textual analysis of 250 articles from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post from 1986 to 2013, highlights how the tone of tech reporting has shifted in the past 20 years. In general, the ITIF found that in the 1980s and 1990s, coverage of technology was largely positive, but this changed from the mid-1990s to 2013, when more negative reports covering the downside of technology, its failure to live up to its promises, and potential ill effects, started to appear. The ITIF attributes this shift to two main causes, the first being that "there has been a significant increase in the number of civil-society organizations and attention-seeking scholars focused on painting a threatening picture of technology," and second, and perhaps most pertinent, "news organizations are under increased financial pressure, and as a result, reporters may have less time and fewer resources to dig deep into technology issues."
This can be easily explained by a corporate shift from offering innovative products that fulfill consumer needs to offering products that exploit consumers in innovative ways. 20 years ago what we consider mundane "information sharing" would cause congressional hearings and indictments of CEOs.
80 and 90s we get a great deal of consumer electronics and computing products that were sold on merits. Late 2000s and into 2010s we have dominance of software that spies and manipulates user behavior for profit. Mid 2010s and we started to see "spies and manipulates" getting pushed into hardware under ruse of IoT.
Negative tone is a result of "You can't fool everyone all the time" playing out.
Maybe because all the news is negative nowadays.
Except that, by any objective measure, the news is NOT negative. The world is most peaceful. The worst war is in Syria, which is a minor conflict by historical standards. There is almost no chance of major power conflict. Living standards are improving across the world. Hundreds of millions of people are rising to the middle class, and in the last ten years, more than a billion have risen out of extreme poverty. Populate growth is falling almost everyone outside Africa. Literacy rates are going up. We are finding cures for diseases, and beating back HIV and malaria. We are making steady progress on solutions to pollution and climate change.
The major headlines in America today (Feb 23rd) are not about war, famine, or plague, but about whether school restroom usage policy should be decided by the federal government, or left up to locals. I don't mean to belittle the issue, but that is hardly an existential crisis for humanity.
If you think that the reality of what is happening in the world is mostly negative, you should reconsider your news sources, and get a more balanced perspective.
Sounds like he is just miffed that "journalists" are editorializing science and technology articles. This is a prime example of the trend TFA is talking about.
If such things make you angry
If complaints about off-topic and pointless SJW snark bother you, perhaps you should consider what compels you to defend such irrational behavior in others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley