Who Knew?

Tech Journalism

Here’s an idea. It may already exist: a publication which covers tech stories from the perspective of its historical precedents. For each news story, they ask: has a similar narrative already played out in the industry in years past? How did they usually resolve themselves? How is this story uniquely new?

I’m not really talking about trend-spotting, although maybe that’s part of it. I see so much great film criticism talking about how the creative work builds on the films that came before it, where a film improves upon or suffers compared to its predecessors. I wonder why tech journalism can’t aspire to do the same.

If such a publication does not yet exist, an obvious scapegoat would be an industry culture where the endless march towards our future is the only option, as being stuck in the past leaves you ripe for disruption. Maybe we can also blame our tendencies towards fanboyism: as I was writing this post, I can think of a few writers who adopt this perspective for Apple or Microsoft or Google. But no one that I can think of is synthesizing knowledge about the entire industry to identify historical patterns that the public can learn from.

(If you do know someone writing from this approach, I would love to be proven wrong.)