Hope Versus Tech Bros
From cynic to encyclical
I have a lot of dear friends from my 21 years in Portland. Because of the work I do (writing for tech companies), my habits (like running with groups and eating delicious food), and the demographics of the place, a fair number of my friends are in tech jobs. Because of the nature of humanity, a fair number are parents and live in comfortable, establishment life-ways that you can easily imagine. Based on what I know of our readership, they are a lot like you. We all share a lot of views; and then there can be these moments where we are dramatically misaligned.
Some of these break my heart and batter my hopes for a better world.
One example is when I look over at their phone and see that they are using Spotify. Spotify was a lousy company from the start and keeps getting lousier. I don’t need to go deep into it here. You can choose from any number of articles about Spotify’s nativity, the algorithms that removed income from your beloved musicians, their playlists that drive you to low cost boring empty crap, and of late their embrace of AI to actually make you listen to fake songs that they claim are from your favorite dead artists.1
Due to the enthusiasm for fiery conversation that can some from shared alcohol consumption, I got into a back and forth with one of my tech-working family-way comfortable-urban/suburban-living friends about Spotify. I can’t recreate the conversation, but this is the gist:
Me: Why do you use Spotify?
Him: Because it is a good app that works well. My kids demand the sharing features so they can interact with their friends. And choosing some other app that is not as pleasurable will have no effect on making the world better, so just use the best one.
Me: So if your purchasing decisions will have no effect on making the world better, what would?
Him: Changes in the law. Regulations and requirements. I have some ideas, like changing intellectual property rules.
This gets me excited, because I very much enjoy participation in the political system. So if my friend wants to change law, let’s team up, make a coalition, and get it enacted.
Me: Will you work with me to help change these laws?
Him: Its hopeless. Big money decides everything. There is no use in trying.
His purchasing decisions can’t make the world better. His political power can’t make the world better. He just lives, it seems to me, in a narrow world trying to optimize for his family while the whole structure falls apart for the human spirit everywhere.
This is so confusing to me. It seems like a bad decision. The human spirit degraded is everyone, including him. Including his kids who want to share music with their friends. Including his friends like me.
It is jaw dropping to me that someone can live in this kind of cynicism. Although I am aware of the influence of money on politics and policy, I am also aware of good people working hard to make our situation better. I want to see support for them and I want to see more of them. The equation that equals a better world requires hope.
In my view, the folks with the currents of power in hand have that power because of policy, and policy can be changed.
Because we don’t tax wealth or business.2
Because we don’t regulate corporate gifts to politicians.3
Because we don’t have an FCC Fairness Doctrine anymore requiring equal time for different views on all television channels.4
Because private equity and shareholder value have become the primary scorekeepers for businesses.5
Because we have no right to privacy or control of our own data other than in varying legal interpretations. [^ https://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html]
Because technology platforms are not responsible for the content they relay to you.6
All these obstacles are law, not culture. But when you hear the Altmans and Musks and Zuckerbergs and the mini versions of these explain it, they suggest that the misery and cynicism is inevitable and natural.
With just a little knowledge of law, you can understand that it is not inevitable. With a little knowledge of history, you can understand that cyncism will continue the degradation and hope will reverse it.7
I was refreshed shortly after this conversation when “My” Leo8 sent me a juicy read.
Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world.
— From the Introduction to Magnifica Humanitus: of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
Published in May of 2026, one year after he assumed the papacy and took the name of a Pope who spoke out for workers during the industrial revolution, Magnifica Humanitus is a long read, but refreshing. Pulling from history and the sum efforts of his church, the First American Pope builds an expectation that we participate in bending our history.
61. In this sense, we can say that the whole is “greater than the sum of its parts” [78] and that, for this very reason, “the mere sum of individual interests is not capable of generating a better world for the whole human family.” [quoting Pope Francis Fratelli Tutti from 2020] Indeed, it is an illusion to think that simply pursuing one’s own progress without caring for others is sufficient for contributing to the good of all.
The Pope seems to have a stronger understanding of AI and tech economics than the entire US Senate. He offers a historically-supported and human-centered way out of where we collectively find ourselvesMagisterium Humanitus specifies that without a government role, the means of pervasive technology will be used for the few who control access.
In many cases within the digital context, control over platforms, infrastructure, data and computing power does not rest with States, but with major economic and technological actors. These entities effectively set the conditions for access, determine the rules of visibility and shape the very possibilities for participation. When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.
In this, my technically settled cynical friends and Pope Leo seem to agree. Spotify compels my friend to use an app he knows is damaging to his world. What Leo does is build from generations of effective guidance that has moved the direction of our lives in the past and can do it again. When I read it, I see a fellow in agreement with me, and that gives me hope, and in that hope I can continue to imagine repair of our world and support those who also imagine technology used for human flourishing.
Apps to use other than the ones run by assholes that you use
Although my friend thinks that it does not matter if you use Spotify, I feel better when I send my money and attention to people who share my vision of the world. Here are a few that I use.
Kagi for search.
Qubuzz for music
Bitwarden for passwords
Open Camera (Google Play or FDroid — a way to get apps outside of the Google Play ecosystem) for Android photos
Guru Maps instead of Google Maps or Apple Maps
Signal instead of text, iMessage, Facetime, Discord, Zoom (somewhat) or WhatsApp
Pocketcasts for podcasts
Consider sharing this publication with people of like minds. And with people who wildly disagree. They can take it.
Interested in Magnifica Humanitas?
Old Truck Good Coffee is planning a group study and discussion of Pope Leo’s Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. Interested in joining up? Inquire by filling out this form.
here is one https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/spotify-algorithm-artists-music-musicians-money-songs-playlists that includes the line which connects to the insights of Pope Leo: “...one of big tech’s most sinister powers: the way that it sidelines dissent in such a subtle way that we only realise what has happened when it is far too late.”
The Fairness Doctrine, repealed in 1987, only applied to broadcast news. It brought us hours of Rush Limbaugh, the pioneer of right wing broadcasting. The FCC would also have to expand its power to cable broadcast to actually have changed the direction of Fox News as well.
https://www.economist.com/business/2025/11/20/private-equity-is-reshaping-american-child-care, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-consequences-of-private-equitys-expansion-in-health-care-services/, https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/private-equity-expansion-youth-sports-104522783.html
They shelter themselves behind section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 regardless of how their algorithm favors some content and staunches others.
Hannah Arendt Center on cynicism https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/propaganda-and-cynicism-2020-02-12
Hopefully his husband won’t mind me calling him that. I have no legal claim to him but he is my partner in this publication, Old Truck Good Coffee.