Does Tech Need a New Narrative?

After some resounding failures (or frauds) of overpromising tech startups such as Theranos (or WeWork), coupled with the stories around Facebook's role in the 2016 US election, including the larger part data plays in manipulating people, the narrative on tech has become gloomier and dystopian, including in the mainstream press. Zuckerberg is still a mythological figure but is far from being considered infaillable anymore. "The myth had been distorted; the idealistic, aspirational narratives had not borne out. The industry needed a new story."

Andressen's new essay, "IT'S TIME TO BUILD" sounds eerly like a "call to arms" to the tech sector to encompass or simply overtake major institutions - with the same self-understood ethos of "doing good through technology". He suggests that politics and what was already build simply isn't enough, so what is lacking is this startup mentality of building more, faster. While it is unclear how it would work, it serves as a way to give gleaming new hope to tech entrepreneurs that they get to be seen as heroes again.

“The tools for distribution have become democratized, and every company can become a source of truth.” - Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, on companies who build their own media arms to expand on their own narratives. It could be indicative to where the tech industry is looking to go forward: keep pushing ambitious, overarching narratives as part of the business model, or focus more on building (rather than "the idea of building").