| Hi, everyone. It's Shira. Happy Thanksgiving, if you are celebrating. If not, you may still get a taste of the festivities as the very American retail mania that is Black Friday infects your world. You're welcome. I know, it sure doesn't feel like there are many things to feel good about in technology. Tech tools have allowed misinformation, bullying and social division to spread like a virus. They have empowered tyrants and monsters, and created a new underclass of grinding jobs. Some days I want to set cartoon dynamite to blow up the internet and start fresh. But my point was … uh … hopefulness. Even with the technology horribles, I want to give thanks for the mostly good. I'm grateful for the boring stuff: Technology isn't only things that scream TECHNOLOGY like virtual-reality goggles for cows, cars without human drivers and hot-air balloons that beam internet service to a remote Amazon rain forest. Technology is also changes in dairy-barn ventilation that make farms more productive. Technology is french fries that keep up with our changing eating habits, stripped-down smartphones that are affordable and usable enough for billions of people, and software that can reduce airport delays by predicting when jet engines need repairs. I can't gloss over ways that technology, even the unglamorous stuff, can have horrible consequences for individuals or lead to painful structural upheavals for economies and job markets. But I also don't want to underplay the genuinely good changes that come from the big and small innovations happening all around us that we may never notice. I'm grateful for people's creativity: One of my first "aha" moments about Snapchat came from Jérôme Jarre, a young Frenchman who got big on the six-second video service Vine (R.I.P.) and then on Snapchat. In a story from a few years ago, Jarre — in snippets of videos and photos — showed himself traveling to a town in Africa and coaching young children to make solar-powered lights from plastic bottles. (I'm pretty sure there was a marketing tie-in, because internet.) Jarre told a complete story in jagged bits over a couple of minutes, and the personality of the children and Jarre shone through despite — or perhaps because of — the confined format. Multibillion-dollar internet companies are nothing without the people harnessing new tools to do genuinely novel, fun, outrageous or informative things. Yes, these tools of human expression are also hijacked for horror and greed, but every day I see a moment of vivid storytelling that makes me feel joy or outrage, or helps me understand a world I never knew. I'm grateful for fear: Every business is terrified of being mowed over by technological change, and that means they have to try harder than ever to keep us happy. Customers of retail stores, car-rental services, telecom providers, airlines, banks and (yes) news organizations are better off with companies that are no longer insulated by monopoly economics. There's nothing like being scared of death to bring out the best in organizations. I'm grateful for the watchdogs and the whistleblowers: The horribles of technology are real. That's why we need academics and researchers who systematically study how misinformation spreads online or root out how our personal privacy is undermined. We need the people working in technology who take the risk of speaking up when they believe something is wrong. We need journalists — self-serving alert — shedding light on the glorious and grim in technology. And even though they get a lot of justified heat, we need regulators and lawmakers to help protect people from the downsides of technological change. All of us might get it wrong sometimes, but I'm grateful there are watchful eyes keeping the powerful accountable. After today, I'll go back to being grumpy about everything. I promise. – Shira Ovide | 
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