Letting that sink in!
Technology on ever-increasing acceleration
I sometimes feel like things in technology over the last decade have continuously been on an accelerator where the acceleration is also increasing.
Let’s take stock of the last ~ 30 months.
2020 was a weird year for the whole world in many ways. The imminent danger and uncertainty around covid and we had deep cuts across the tech industry in Q2 of 2020 - all you could hear and read was death and layoffs.
People perished in millions and companies in thousands. You adjusted your living expenses and tightened the belt since no one had any idea how long it was going to last and if we would ever go out without masks in the next five years.
Overall 2020 was about quick lifestyle adjustment, expenses, dealing with grief, and a crash course on viruses.
2021 was not significantly different but by this time, we had vaccines rolling in most of the developed countries of the world and H2 of 2021 saw the vaccine rollout in developing and under-developed countries as well.
Most of the countries had to deal with the Delta variant which wreaked havoc across countries and unless one was super lucky, we had a bleak April-June’21 in India.
With the vaccines coming in, there was hope and a renewed sense to jumpstart life. The vaccine manufacturing and rollout was a miracle and monumental effort globally with all the issues around vaccine discrimination and misinformation, pricing arm-twisting, and whatnot. Leapfrogging in technology, biological sciences, and mRNA vaccines opens up many possibilities.
At the same time, due to tons of money being printed out of thin air (apparently that’s the usual process as I learned in 2020!) - we had millions of people flipping monkey jpegs for millions and business models around delivering your Cheetos and Lays in 7.1 minutes while you sit on your couch in PJs. The hiring market was hot in technology and a widespread enthusiasm about technology, crypto, and biological sciences.
So Q2 of 2021 saw immeasurable suffering due to deaths because of covid and lack of oxygen - especially in Asia and on the other hand, excesses due to liquidity. I did partake in the crypto gluttony for a few weeks - taking a few free courses to brush up on crypto fundamentals even though the pace at which the terms cropped in crypto far outpaced my capacity to get a 101 on them - let alone developing a deep understanding. Naturally, I took my bets on what Musk was about to tweet as did tons of people (also known as degens in crypto parlance)
Overall 2021 was about dealing with the Delta havoc, getting a crash course on vaccines, and getting your head around the madness in technology businesses - especially crypto. Life saw a restart in the last 3-4 months of 2021.
Come 2022 and we defeated covid after a scare around Omicron. Much before the anticipated 5-6 years mark. A win for humanity, as they say.
Then a shocking, brutal war happened out of nowhere (that continues to be), inflation creeps up, interest rates go high and the outlook turns bleak. The monkey jpg supposedly worth 100 thousand dollars aren’t worth the jpg files now. The so-called futurists and innovators who were shilling smooth talking under the garb of Web3, AI and Robot Delivery have now flipped to posting drab motivational quotes on LinkedIn about efficiency, profits, and Generative AI.
Crypto, the insane growth it saw in 2021 - got hammered badly over the year through dozens of cuts. From Luna debacle to 3AC bankruptcy to the FTX fallout in Nov’22 - the space has seen instances of fraud, mismanagement, and whatnot over and over again. There are pressing questions being posed to the DCG group now on if it’s going to be the next chip to fall.
In terms of digital economies, the same companies that laid off thousands in 2020, and hired thousands in 2021 are again laying off thousands in 2022.
Optimism (2019) → Pessimism (2020) → Excess Euphoria (2021) → Pessimism (2022)
I don’t know how many people feel these cycles to be much faster than probably how they used to be a decade or so back, say in the 90s or early 2000s. Even there was a gap of 7-8 years from the DotCom bust to the Great Recession of 2008. Now those cycles are at a yearly level.
Let’s see what 2023 has in store for us. The past 3 years have provided a bunch of perspectives and one of them sure is that no one knows how the markets move. The experts are more often wrong than right and there’s a surprise, good or bad, at every corner. Letting that sink in when we arrive in 2023!