The Great Qualities of the Uncool
Lately, I’ve been enjoying following technologists and writers who are interested in “uncool” tech. The flashiness of the Valley and tales of “innovation” have become exhausting, and are sometimes (often?) empty. In an era of bloat and companies with cultures and sizes that overshadow their profits, there is so much to be said for the reliable, the boring, the uncool.
For instance:
Fast.AI, founded by Rachel Thomas and Jeremy Howard, has the tagline “making neural nets uncool again,” meaning that an understanding of deep learning shouldn’t be exclusive to a few.
Vicki Boykis of Normcore Tech. Vicki focuses on the interesting parts of tech that don’t often make the news or aren’t widely discussed. I also love her about page for the blog: “Think of this as a pit stop for your poor, tired, clickbaited, overstimulated mind.”
Shira Ovide at the New York Times has a great newsletter and tends to focus on the less hype-y but important areas of the tech world. This edition is an especially great example.
The appreciation of the “uncool” parts of tech, or of making tech “uncool”, points to several excellent qualities. Importance, nuance, inclusion. To highlight my point, let me give an example of the negative qualities of the “cool”. Those who know me know that one of my biggest pet peeves is overcomplicated jargon in technology (and anywhere, really), and using it to keep others out, or to keep others down.
A few years ago I went to an event on cryptocurrencies that was billed as a learning experience but really was a marketing event for a fund investing in cryptos. I bristled at the way the possibly well-meaning but misguided young founders incorrectly described cryptocurrencies as “unhackable”, and erroneously explained how the Internet worked. While the event was purportedly to educate the attendees, the tone was extremely “don’t worry about this fancy fun sexy crypto stuff, it’s complicated, we’ll dumb it down for you!” That may be an exact quote. (Kidding, kind of.)
You have to meet people where they are, but you can also explain things in a much easier way which shows respect for your audience and inclusion towards them. It allows you to get into the interesting, nuanced details and better determine what’s actually important.
Uncoolness is a threat to some because coolness protects what makes them feel special. But uncoolness allows us to see what is really, truly innovative, as opposed to just flashy, and also allows us to see where innovations might not be needed. We have a bias towards the “new”, and sometimes a good old-fashioned boring solution is just fine, thank you very much.
For next week, I will explain how blockchain works in as simple a way as possible.