Paul Ford writes for Wired Magazine as the co-founder of a software company that is tired of the ubiquitous pursuit of disruption within the tech industry. He argues that disruption serves the bored and that boredom is a luxury we no longer have, even in the U.S. — particularly after January 6, 2021.
That type of progress definitely generates a ton of activity. But it also sits weird when you consider how many lives in the world, historically and currently, including American lives, are extremely disrupted—by toxic spills or the whims of royalty or the goats all swelling up and dying. Disruption is an ethos for the bored, for people who live in reasonable climates and don’t have tanks in the street. But America has recently become way less boring.
Disruption was a big goal when things seemed to be stable. We wanted tools that disrupted the status quo. Now we’ve seen the effects of disruption. Polarization, fragmentation, and decline seem to be the by-products of the disruption we once craved so heartily.
