Jubilant Novel Year! It’s been one more wild and wacky jog of a yr in the tech world: breakthroughs and disgraces, triumphs and catastrophes, cryptocurrencies and starships, the ongoing upward push of utopian dapper energy and dystopian cyberpunk societies and, most of all, the ongoing weirding of the total broad world.
In diversified words, it modified into once one more excellent yr for The Jons, the annual award that celebrates dubious tech-associated achievements, named, in an alarm-consuming fit of humility, after myself. We’ve bought rather a lineup for you this yr, folks. So let’s get to it! With cramped or no further ado, I present you with: the fifth annual Jon Awards for Dubious Technical Achievement!
(The Jons 2015) (The Jons 2016) (The Jons 2017) (The Jons 2018)
THE CATLIKE FINANCIAL REFLEXES AWARD FOR LANDING ON YOUR FEET AFTER UNMITIGATED DISASTER
To Adam Neumann, who presided over the spectacular upward push and rather a lot extra spectacular fall from grace of WeWork, which proudly launched its proposed IPO this yr and promptly saw most of its valuation (and its money) disintegrate in a sea of eyebrow-elevating reports about delusional irresponsibility and the merciless realities of precise business. On the other hand, give Neumann credit ranking: reports might per chance presumably even gain made him sound indulge in a pot-smoking surfer dude who lived in a hallucinatory fantasyland, but — unlike his workers, whose dreams of IPO wealth had been all staunch now and completely shattered — he managed to walk away from the business he drove in the case of into the floor with a reported $1.7 billion windfall.
THE EVERYBODY’S BEST FRIEND AWARD FOR INSPIRING NOSEBLEED VALUATIONS AND ASPIRATIONAL POSTERS EVERYWHERE
To Masayoshi Son, whose broadly announced dreams of a $108 billion Vision Fund II modified into the relative nightmare of something “a ways smaller” — but silent has his surreal, dreamlike dash decks to fall assist on. After all, “SoftBank works to comfort of us in their sorrow.”
THE WE MAY AS WELL JUST GIVE HIM A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR ELON DOING HIS ELON THING
To — clearly — Elon Musk, who if truth be told had a terribly staunch yr: Tesla stock bought “so excessive” it brushed the rate at which he beforehand announced he would rob it non-public (he didn’t); SpaceX launched Starlink, a “very sizable deal“; and he modified into once acquitted of defamation for calling a total stranger a pedophile on Twitter. OK, so he furthermore announced Starship also can silent attain orbit by this coming March, and smashed the Cybertruck’s allegedly unbreakable windows onstage at its unveiling, but silent, a staunch yr! Ogle you in 2020, Elon.
THE IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T CONVINCE, TELL AN EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS TALE AWARD FOR RISIBLE SATOSHI NAKAMOTO CLAIMS
To Craig Wright, who has long claimed in the face of mocking industrywide disbelief to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and in particular for his claims that, now work with me right here, the keys to 1 million of Satoshi’s bitcoin had been set apart in a “Tulip Belief” by a protracted-deceased collaborator and also will be dropped at him by a “bonded courier” on January 1, 2020, i.e. just a few days from now. The deem he suggested this to modified into once, unsurprisingly, spectacularly unconvinced, announcing “Dr. Wright’s demeanor did no longer label me as any individual who modified into once telling the truth,” and furthermore reproached him for his “willful and imperfect faith sample of obstructive habits.” You don’t affirm.
THE DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, BUT ONLY IF THEY’RE ACTUALLY DEAD AWARD FOR LEAVING A TRAIL OF CRYPTOCURRENCY CHAOS IN ONE’S WAKE
To my fellow Canadian Gerald William Cotten, the founding father of QuadrigaCX, who it appears to be stole and/or misplaced in actuality all of his customers’ money, spending valuable of it on “luxurious items and exact property,” sooner than his loss of life in Mumbai final yr. “However Jon,” you affirm, “how does this quality for a 2019 Jon Award?” For the explanation that rather a ramification of thousands who misplaced money are if truth be told stressful an exhumation to search out out that the body in Cotten’s grave is, truly, Cotten. As for the surviving founder, he’s “a reported ex-con who served 18 months in a federal U.S. penitentiary for identification theft, bank fraud and bank card fraud.” Is this the halt of this loopy memoir? …Correctly, doubtlessly sure. However in the arena of cryptocurrencies, which reliably affords us the most jawdropping Jons, who can affirm for obvious?
THE I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE BABY AND IT’S PRETTY CRAZY AWARD FOR EPITOMIZING OUR CYBERPUNK PRESENT
To Lil Nas X, a beforehand unknown peculiar murky American teenager who made a country-entice song with a beat he bought for $30 from a Dutch producer, which sampled an imprecise Nine Hasten Nails deep gash; recorded it in no longer up to an hour for $20; crafted a hundred memes to publicize it on a brand fresh Chinese language-owned video-snippet social community till it went viral courtesy of a Yeehaw Difficulty meme; then saw it hit first country and then crossover success, and change into the longest-reigning Billboard No. 1 single of all time. Does it even get extra postmodern cyberpunk than that? Lil Nas X, right here’s your world (successfully, and Billie Eilish’s) — we just dwell in it.
THE POWER TO DRIVE BABY BOOMERS COMPLETELY MAD AWARD FOR BEING SENSIBLY UPSET ABOUT THINGS
To Greta Thunberg, one more teenager, who is an inflamed suggest of doing something about local weather switch and for some motive time and but again drives quite a lot of of it appears to be lucid of us, apart from the president of the USA, fully insane, prompting them to diploma ludicrous and deeply peculiar assaults at a sixteen-yr-venerable autistic woman. It’s a ways in point of fact mystifying, and but revelatory. Per chance they’re just upset that she’s so staunch at Twitter?
THE SOMEONE MUST BE TO BLAME, THIS IS SOMEONE, THEY MUST BE TO BLAME AWARD FOR LASHING OUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTIONS
To the mass media, for the techlash: the backlash against tech in which they blame the tech industry no longer handiest for its precise sins and complications, that are admittedly no longer exhausting to search out, but furthermore for in actuality every little thing that’s defective with the arena’s political and monetary systems. Politics is somehow the fault of Fb, in characteristic of venal politicians and their ability to manipulate, er, the mass media indulge in a Stradivarius. Inequality is somehow the fault of the tech industry, in characteristic of City / Wall Avenue parasitism, regulatory grasp and, but again, the politicians who if truth be told write the regulations which assign inequality. All but again, the tech industry has exact complications — however the truth that it has devoured the marketing and classifieds earnings that long propped up the media appears to be to gain introduced about in another case sober and considerate journalists to instinctively knee-jerk blame it for each in heart-broken health, whereas letting their precise architects off lightly. Sadly I peril this one goes to be a perennial.
THE WHO NEEDS HUMAN FACES OR WORDS AWARD FOR SIMULATING THE DEEP INSIGHTS OF INTERNET DISCOURSE
To StyleGAN 2 and GPT-2, neural networks from Nvidia and OpenAI respectively, which generate completely convincing fallacious human faces, and shut-ample-for-the-net convincing fallacious human remark sections, respectively. I if truth be told feel obvious that somewhere in the market on the net, bots with StyleGAN avatars and GPT-2-sourced texts are already waging conflict against one one more in befuddling remark sections: battles which gain no halt, no level and no room for any precise humanity. The extra issues switch, eh?
THE POP GOES THE IPO AWARD FOR MAKING LOCKUP PERIODS MEANINGFUL AGAIN
To Slack, Lyft and Uber, all of whom went public this yr and, no matter being extraordinarily excessive-profile tech corporations, promptly saw their stock costs crater and protect there, whereas their most contemporary workers presumably saw their lockup length attain and crawl whereas final resolutely underwater. All this whereas sizable, slow tech corporations indulge in Google and Microsoft saw their stock climb to fresh highs in the case of every week. Per chance joining a rocket ship isn’t for all time this kind of mountainous opinion finally…
THE WHAT’S A FEW BILLION DOLLARS BETWEEN FRIENDS AWARD FOR JAM YESTERDAY, JAM TOMORROW BUT NEVER JAM TODAY
To Ron Abovitz of Magic Jump, whose skills demos over the final decade were, by all accounts, if truth be told breathtaking and thoughts-boggling, but whose precise shipped skills, no matter 10 years and in the case of $3 billion in funding, has been, by all accounts, deeply disappointing. Now Magic Jump is hemorrhaging excessive-profile board contributors, signing over patents as collatoral to JP Morgan Trudge whereas desperately making an try to resolve funding and it subsequent headset is reportedly silent years away from initiating. However inquire of, those demos had been remarkable.
THE A SINGLE SACRIFICIAL LAMB FRANKLY ISN’T ENOUGH AWARD FOR A DEEP AND SYSTEMIC CATASTROPHE
To Boeing and its 737 MAX debacle, in which, amongst rather a ramification of diversified stunning derelictions of traditional engineering tasks, an crucial security parts had been supplied as successful optionally accessible extras — and but it took no longer one but two crashes, killing a ramification of, for them to admit any complications. Their CEO has resigned, however the firm’s mess ups are clearly deep and systemic in characteristic of individual; their once famously engineer-pushed company culture is clearly no extra. Their example of the decline of American capitalism basically is nearly reasonably too on-the-nostril, but then, that’s 2019 for you.
Congratulations, of a sort, to the total winners of The Jons! All recipients shall acquire a bobblehead of myself made up as a Blue Man, as per the image on this post, that also can without doubt change into coveted and extra and extra treasured collectibles. (And unnecessary to negate, one day subsequent yr they’ll change into redeemable for JonCoin.) And, clearly, all winners will most likely be remembered by posterity forevermore.
1Bobbleheads shall handiest be dispensed if and when on hand and convenient. The eventual existence of said bobbleheads is never any longer assured or certainly even in particular most likely. No longer legitimate on days named after Norse or Roman gods. All rights reserved, in particular those rights about which now we gain reservations.
