I've been following tech news for decades, and one of the worst trends in the broader cultural conversation about technology — one that's markedly accelerated over the last decade — is the shift from talking about people who create tech to focusing on those who merely finance it.

It's time we change the story. When you see a story that claims to be about "technology", ask yourself:

• Does this story focus on the actual tech, and the people who created it?
• Does it explain what's innovative about the technology, and does it ask whether the technology is real and substantive, and whether it can actually do what it claims to do?
• Or does this story talk about moving money around and making promises about things that may or may not exist, or refer to things that may not actually work?

These questions aren't being asked nearly enough. The result is a hell of a lot of "tech" stories that have approximately nothing to do with technology.

Writing checks isn't writing code.

The shift to centering money movers over makers has had incredibly negative effects on innovation, accountability, and even just the basic accuracy of how stories are told about technology.

We see this play out in a number of ways. First, a huge percentage of all stories about new technologies focus solely on startups, even though a small fraction of all tech workers are employed by startups, and the vast majority of new technology innovations come from academia, the public sector, and research and development organizations within other institutions outside of the startup world. As I wrote nine years ago, there is no technology industry — every organization uses technology, so technological innovation can come from anywhere. But we seldom see that broad base of ideas and insight covered accurately, if they're covered at all, because they're not of interest to the investors who are hogging the spotlight.

There's also the fact that a disproportionately large number of "technology" stories are really just announcements about funding events for companies in the technology sector, which has very little to do with the merits or substance of the tech that they create, taking time and space away from other innovations that could be covered, but also distracting from talking about how the tech actually works. This erodes the ability for people who care about technology to share knowledge, which is key for driving broader innovations.

One of the great joys of being in various technology communities is how you can "find your people" — those who geek out about the same minute technical details as you. There's a profound spirit of generosity in so many tech communities, where people will go out of their way to help you troubleshoot or fix bugs or will contribute code, just to share in that spirit of creativity together. There's a magical and rewarding feeling the first time you get some code to successfully run, or the first time you get a bit of hardware to successfully boot, and people who love technology delight in helping others achieve that. I've seen this remain true for people at every stage of their career, with even some of the most expert coders in the world voluntarily spending their time helping beginning coders with questions just because they had a shared interest.

The most common reason that people create technology is because they had an idea about something cool they wanted to see in the world. That's the underlying ethos which connects tech creators together, and which motivates them to share their work as free or open source projects, or to write up their weekend hacks just for the love nerding out. Sometimes there's enough interest that they might turn that side project into a business, but in most cases the fundamental motivation is the creative spirit. And then, sure, if that creative project needs capital to grow into its full potential, then there's a place for investors to join the conversation.

That creative spirit used to be more obvious when more of the cultural story about tech featured actual makers; it's what brought me and most of my peers into this space in the first place. And all of that gets crowded out when people think the only path into creating something begins with appeasing a tiny handful of gatekeepers who control the pursestrings.

Power In Play

There's been a larger cost to this focus on venture capitalists and financiers over coders, engineers, and inventors: It's gone to their heads. Part of the reason is that some of the investors, long ago, used to make products. A handful of them even made successful ones, and some of those successful ones were even good. But after riding on the coattails of those successes for a long time, and spending years in the bubble of praise and sycophancy that comes with being a person that people want to get money from, the egos start to grow. The story becomes about their goals, their agendas, their portfolios.

When we see something like a wildly-distorted view of artificial intelligence get enough cultural traction to become considered “conventional wisdom” despite the fact that it’s a wildly unpopular view held by a tiny, extremist minority within the larger tech sphere — that is the result of focusing on investors instead of inventors. Who cares what the money-movers think? We want to hear what motivated the makers!

We’re also losing the chance for people to see themselves reflected in the stories we tell about technology. It’s obvious that the cabal of check-writers is a closed cohort. But that’s a stark contrast to the warm and welcoming spirit that still suffuses the communities of actual creators. There's a striking lack of historical perspective in how we talk about tech today. Let community voices lead instead of a tiny group of tycoons, and you'd get much more interesting, accurate stories. We couldn’t imagine a film being released without talking about who the director was, or the actors, and they even give out awards for the writers. But when a new app comes out, media talks to the CEO of the tech company — that’s like talking to the head of the studio about the new movie.

We have so much richer stories to tell. At its best, technology empowers people, in a profound and extraordinary way. I’ve seen people change their lives, even change entire communities, by getting just the barest bit of access to the right tech at the right time. There’s something so much more compelling and fascinating about finding out how things actually work, and thinking about how they might work better. The way to get there is by talking to the people who are actually making that future.