If you are still using sleds after the invention of the wheel, you are making a mistake. If you are innovating with pencil and paper after the development of the computer, you're making a grave error. There was no virtue in still sending faxes in 2010.

Tech has to believe this. We're all victims of the Upton Sinclair "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" thing.

A lot of tech is just straight up bad. The machine gun was bad. The nuclear bomb was bad. Social media was bad. TV was bad. Cars were bad. C++ was bad.

> If you are innovating with pencil and paper after the development of the computer, you're making a grave error.

This is a great example. Study after study shows that writing on paper helps retention and analysis vs. typing. Study after study shows reading on paper helps retention and comprehension vs. a screen.

> There was no virtue in still sending faxes in 2010.

You can send a document with an authentic signature. This might not seem like a big deal, but "wet ink" clauses prevent many pro-democracy agendas (voter registration, etc), and the good faith reason for them (the typical reason is voter suppression) is that documents are too easy to forge without signatures.

But also, were fax machines bad? Did they enable an even-more-sprawling bureaucracy? We're well past the point where "new tech = good" is even close to default true.