The Word of the Year Is ‘Uncertainty’

More than two years after the pandemic times, technology is more popular, more powerful and richer than ever before. or is it?

This year, especially the last few weeks, has complicated a fairly simple understanding of how most of the tech industry and America’s superstar digital companies have been battling it out.

Over the past year or so, my colleagues and I have repeatedly written that technology is the undisputed winner in the strange pandemic economy. People and businesses need what tech companies are selling, and that growing reliance is making tech stars grow faster and be far more profitable than Silicon Valley geeks could have imagined. Now… Ridiculous dollars. +.

I think the grade should now be revised to incomplete. 2020 and some of his 2021 trends (like moving work, shopping, product marketing, entertainment, and socializing online) are starting to recede. In retrospect, it is unclear how much of the digital surge was transitory at the time and how much of a sustained acceleration of technological change.

That uncertainty, along with inflation and a weakening economy, makes it difficult to grasp what is happening with technology today, or even assess the past few years. It could be about to hit the right time, or it could be the beginning of a rough patch for their product and finances. nobody knows anything

While some tech executives are confident about their future, others are sweating with anxiety. It’s as if they live in two separate realities.

One realm is the land of Big Tech, with the emperors of Microsoft, Google, Amazon (probably), Apple (probably) in their fortresses looking down on us.

Google and Microsoft’s revenues continue to grow from unsustainably huge digital advertising and software sales in 2021.

On Tuesday, Google executives said the word “uncertainty” or variations of it 13 times during a conference call with investors. According to the company, in 2023 it will start to become apparent that Google is slowing adoption. Planning to cut spending so many months in advance suggests the company doesn’t think it will weather the US recession or other global challenges easily.

Winners of some of the pandemic’s most terrifying phases have also struggled, raising questions about whether the hectic days of 2020 were partly a mirage.

Netflix has lost subscribers for two quarters in the US and Canada. As such, some experts question whether online streaming as a whole can grow as big, fast, and lucratively as optimists believed. Snap, which owns the Snapchat app, Fortune and availability increase Before returning to its previous state in 2020: a less successful company with an uncertain future.

Shopify offers software that helps face-to-face businesses set up online storefronts. Said This week, we believed the pandemic had no lasting impact on people transitioning from in-person shopping to the internet. . Temporary hyperglycemia.

Amazon has been less outspoken, admitting that it overestimated how quickly e-commerce sales could grow, and has cut back on some spending. (Amazon and Apple will disclose quarterly results later on Thursday.)

And the meta… Phew. I’m sure I’ve never seen a company switch from confident to grumpy Mr. Magoo so quickly.

The company’s revenue fell for the first time, and the Instagram app identity crisisBut is this the beginning of the end of Meta as a dominant digital power, or a temporary lull due to a combination of inflation, privacy changes by Apple, and ugliness compared to pandemic-related ad sales spikes? I don’t know if it’s… and the profit it once reported. Meta’s annual revenue has almost doubled from this point in 2019. This is not (yet) a sign that the company is in perpetual decline.

With the US and other major economies weakening, digital superstars may use this moment of uncertainty to push into new areas and expand their dominance. If profitable markets such as , online advertising, e-commerce, and enterprise software slow or shrink in the next few years, even the giants may not be able to stay strong.

Is technology winning? Can we take a long vacation and revisit this question in 2023?

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Tip of the week

Useful modification of gadgets

Brian X. ChenConsumer tech columnist for The New York Times published the following useful list: Standard settings to change Reduce the data you share with digital companies using iPhones, Facebook apps, and other technologies. Brian is here with some more tweaks to his favorite settings to make our device more fun (or less annoying):

• Maximize video resolution on iPhone. On iPhone,[設定]and open[カメラ]Select,[ビデオの録画]Tap. Choose one of the 4K options. (I use 30 frames per second.) This ensures that the camera records video at the highest possible resolution. The downside is that your recordings will clog up a lot of the phone’s digital storage. But if you bought an expensive camera, why not use it?

• Minimize wrist distractions. On my Apple Watch, I like to turn off notifications for all apps except the messaging and workout apps. To do this, open the Watch app on your iPhone and tap[通知]to turn off notifications for each app. (Also, I always mute the clock.)

• Put your favorite features within reach: On Android phones, you can customize the Quick Settings menu for shortcuts to frequently used functions. Swipe down from the top of your phone screen, then swipe down again. Tap the pencil-like icon to add a tile to turn on your phone’s flashlight or put it into airplane mode from your phone’s home screen. You can also rearrange the order of these function shortcuts to your liking.

Before going …

• Congress is getting closer to funding US chip factories. The U.S. government will likely do something relatively unusual, using taxpayer money to subsidize industry. In this case, you pay a computer chip manufacturer to manufacture some products in the United States. My colleague Catie Edmondson reported that the purpose of this funding, which includes large amounts of money to support US scientific and technological research, is to counter China. There’s also a long list of other missions, some of which are more confusing.

  From the New York Times Opinion:: The U.S. dominance in key technology areas such as chips requires the U.S. to do more to create a talent pipeline at home and abroad.

• Two historians have found people’s mental hospital medical records for sale on eBay. they I have written At Slate, we are concerned that e-commerce sites should be more responsible for what they sell and that the general public treats mental illness and disability as entertainment.

• Video games of sickness escape and sickness memories: Washington Post writer Jean Park was recently diagnosed with cancer and found herself obsessed with Cyberpunk 2077, a video game about how to survive a terminal illness. “Given the current predicament, I’m not even close to realizing my sudden fascination with this title,” Park said. I have written.

Embrace this

look at this little baby jacana bird(The jacana is a tropical migratory bird with very long legs and toes.)

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