The word of the year is ‘certainty’

More than two years into Pandemic Times, the technology is more prominent, robust and prosperous than ever. or is it

This year — and especially the past few weeks — has complicated a fairly clear understanding of how much of the tech industry and America’s superstar digital companies have fared.

Over the past year or so, my colleagues and I have written that technology is the undisputed winner of the oddball pandemic economy. People and businesses needed what tech companies were selling, and this increased confidence allowed tech stars to grow faster and more profitable than Silicon Valley nerds ever imagined. Bonkers Dollars. A+

I think that level should now be revised to incomplete. Some of the trends of 2020 and 2021 — including more work, marketing, product marketing, entertainment and socializing online — are starting to slip back. In retrospect, it is now unclear how much of the digital boom of those years was a blip and how much was the acceleration of lasting technological change.

That uncertainty, along with inflation and a weakened economy, makes it difficult to know what’s happening in technology today, or even to assess the past two years. We may be at a very good time for a technology, or we may be at a difficult start for their products and funding. Let me repeat what should be the mantra of 2022: Nobody knows.

Some tech executives are feeling confident about their future, while others are sweating nervousness. It’s like living in two different realities. And maybe they do.

In the first realm is Big Tech land, with the likes of Microsoft, Google, Amazon (maybe), Apple (maybe) and a few other entrenched monarchs staring us in the face.

Revenues at Google and Microsoft continue to rise on the back of unsustainable giant digital advertising and software sales in 2021. Both companies this week expressed optimism about their prospects but warned of challenges ahead.

On Tuesday, Google executives said the word “no doubt” 13 times during a conference call with investors. By 2023, the company said, it will start to become clear that Google is slowing hiring. Planning a spending diet several months in advance is a sign that the company does not expect to weather the recession in the United States and other global problems.

Several winners of the pandemic’s dreaded season are struggling, questioning whether their 2020 major dates were a partial shock.

Netflix has lost two-quarters of its subscribers in the United States and Canada. That has led some experts to doubt that online streaming is as big, fast and profitable as some experts believe. Snap, the owner of the Snapchat app, saw its fortunes soar in 2020 before reverting to what it used to be: a company with a bleak future.

Shopify, whose software helps brick-and-mortar businesses set up online storefronts, said this week it acknowledged the outbreak has not had a lasting impact on people moving from physical to online shopping. If Shopify is right, the general idea that the pandemic has caused a shift in shopping habits is spot on. It will be a temporary sugar level.

Amazon isn’t quite as straightforward, but the company has acknowledged how fast e-commerce sales are growing and cutting some costs. (Amazon and Apple report quarterly financial results later Thursday.)

And meta… phew. I’m not sure I’ve seen a company change from Swagger to Mr. Mago so quickly.

The company’s revenue has fallen for the first time and the Instagram app is experiencing an identity crisis. But I can’t say if this is the end of the meta as a major digital powerhouse or due to temporary inflation, privacy changes by Apple, and ugly changes in ad sales related to the pandemic. And profit is reported once. Meta’s annual revenue nearly doubled in 2019. That’s not a sign (yet) of the company’s permanent decline.

As the United States and other major economies weaken, digital superstars can use this period of uncertainty to muscle into new areas and extend their dominance. Moreover, even the giants may not be able to stay strong if their lucrative markets, which include premium smartphones, online advertising, e-commerce and corporate software, slow or decline over the next few years.

Is technology winning or not? Can I take a long break and revisit this question in 2023?

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Tip of the week

Convenient changes for your gadgets

Brian X. ChenThe New York Times’ consumer technology columnist published a useful list Normal settings that we need to change To reverse the information we share with digital companies for iPhones, the Facebook app and other technologies. Brian is here with his favorite settings tweaks to make our devices more fun (or less annoying).

• Increase video quality on iPhone: On iPhones, open Settings, select Camera, and tap Record Video. Choose one of the 4K options. (I’ll go with 30 frames per second.) This ensures that your camera is recording high-resolution video. The downside is that your recordings clog up more of the phone’s digital storage. But if you paid for a nice camera, why not use it?

• Reduce distractions on the wrist: On the Apple Watch, I prefer to turn off notifications for every app except the messaging and fitness apps. To do this, open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap Notifications, and turn off notifications for each app. (Also, I always turn off the clock sounds.)

• Keep your favorite features close at hand: On Android phones, you can customize the “Quick Settings” menu for the shortcuts you use most often. Swipe down from the top of the smartphone screen and swipe down again. If you tap the icon that looks like a pencil, you can choose to turn on your phone’s flashlight, for example, or add tiles that let you go into airplane mode from your phone’s home screen. You can also adjust the order of these feature shortcuts according to your preferences.

Before we go…

• Congress passes funding for US chip factories: The US government seems to be doing something relatively unusual and using taxpayer money to subsidize an industry – in this case paying computer chip manufacturers to make certain products in the US. My colleague Kathy Edmondson reports that the purpose of this funding includes more money to support American science and technology research, to counter China. There’s also a long list of other missions, some of which are even muddier.

  Commentary from the New York Times: American dominance in important technology sectors such as chips requires America to do more to create pipelines of talent both in the United States and abroad.

• Two historians found medical records from a psychiatric asylum for sale on eBay. E-commerce sites need to take more responsibility for what they sell, they wrote on the prayer, worrying that the public is viewing mental illness and disability as entertainment.

• An escape and reminder video game: Washington Post writer Gene Park was recently diagnosed with cancer and learned how to navigate the deadly disease through the video game “Cyberpunk 2077.” “Given my current predicament, I am no closer to understanding my sudden feelings on this topic,” Park wrote.

For this hug

Look at these Young baby jacana birds! (Jacanas are tropical birds with very long legs and toes.)

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