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@flexport shipped more than 100million units of PPE in a disaster response effort that started Jan 27th, when Silicon Valley was being *mocked* for taking covid seriously. @patrickc and Stripe helped launch FastGrants, which got scientists money to study covid w/ 48 hr turnaround https://twitter.com/clairecdowns/status/1337579647538630657
There are apps that get groceries delivered for at-risk people - my family uses Instacart. There are apps that do contact tracing while protecting user privacy - my state just launched theirs. There are companies making masks and building better tests.
This has been a tough year. Anyone who hasn't asked themselves "could I have seen this coming sooner? could I have done more? who did get things done this year? how'd they do it?" is missing a serious opportunity to try that, and learn some important stuff.
But if you try to squeeze that process of reflection and accountability into a preexisting worldview that tech is evil, you're not going to get reflection and accountability, you're just going to bash the lifesaving work of thousands of people who sacrificed a lot this year.
Reflection and accountability after a catastrophe on this scale should be a little uncomfortable! There is something so tragically, heartbreakingly *small* about looking at this year and coming away with the takeaway 'yah fuck Silicon Valley, probably they didn't do anything'.
