2014 is shaping up to be a year of backlash. Technology is important and mostly a force for good, but right now the industry has (and deservingly so) lost the

2014 is shaping up to be a year of backlash. Technology is important and mostly a force for good, but right now the industry has (and deservingly so) lost the trust of, well, everyone. As we realize that technology is too important to be trusted to arrogant, myopic, sloppy, sexist, and often deeply classist Silicon Valley assholes, we're going to see only more controversy. With that will come (disliked and sometimes wrongheaded) regulation, increasing class tension, and perhaps a widespread loss of faith in the current technological leadership. The truth is that most tech companies are horrible. They're horrible to their own employees (mean-spirited stack-ranking policies) and horrible to their users and the world outside of them. They've turned the Valley into an Uberized, Snow Crash cesspool. In about 12 months, we've gone from tech exceptionalism (pundits asking why Wall Street talent wasn't "doing good for the world" in Silicon Valley) to a full-on hatred of this industry, and it's deserved. Rank-and-file programmers who ride Google buses don't deserve to be harassed, but the leadership deserves far more hate than it has seen so far. Technology has to make a new choice. Either it changes its leadership wholesale, or Silicon Valley becomes Public Enemy #1. And, unlike Wall Street, it doesn't have the collective social skill to still prosper while being hated.