" ... and the startup culture which is basically performative entrepreneurship, consuming a certain lifestyle to signal being part of a certain class, with the

" ... and the startup culture which is basically performative entrepreneurship, consuming a certain lifestyle to signal being part of a certain class, with the products being created performing essentially no meaningful social function and don't constitute any sort of technical progress." OK, maybe - but only because you say tech today is "dominated" by these two tropes, not "consists only". There are exceptions. Obviously I have one self-serving example in mind, but let's skip that. As I brainstorm, the first one that comes to mind is NextDNS which is such a fantastic and simple idea (and one I wish I had thought of). github, too, was a very substantive and progressive model that has really changed the tech world.