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Technology isn’t local
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 6:18 am on 1/19/2003
There’s something William Gibson said long ago, and which is nearly as famous in some circles as his flogged-to-death coinage ‘cyberspace.’ Instead of a neologism, it’s a phrase, a powerful summation of the core ethos of hacking: “The street finds its own uses for technology.”
I was at Moe’s Books today, of all places, and I found a pile of a thin newspaper called Bay Area High-Tech. It looks for all the world like the Berkeley Daily Planet, the startup micro-daily here in town that recently went under. That’s why I picked it up. Although the stories on the front page were national ones (even if Intel and Apple are based in the Bay Area, that doesn’t make their travails local news), I envisioned some nice local angles in the interior. Nothing too exciting, maybe pieces on local wireless activists or other non-profit groups.
But Bay Area High-Tech has no local news in it. Every story inside has a generic, if generally somewhat hacker-leaning, headline on it: UK Firm Sues Microsoft For Stealing Its Cell Phone Technology. Microsoft Re-rates IE Flaw After Experts Take It To Task. IBM Offers Voice Over IP Network Services. There is one tiny article about California’s anti-spam legislation in the Security section; that’s it. The rest is slightly old-smelling tech news and pseudo-advertisements (which are, helpfully, set off in boxes with a different headline font).
Bay Area High-Tech has no URL for itself in its masthead, or anywhere else. Its advertising salespeople are the same as its co-publishers. Overall it’s pretty clear that this is just another play at selling full-page Fry’s ads, and if so, it’s a missed opportunity in my opinion.
But am I right? Has the Internet made one big neighborhood out of everyone who might care about your new tech development? Or is the street, like the real one, finding any new uses for technology anymore? Is there such a thing as local technology news?
If there isn’t, should we make some?