Keen On

“That he not busy being born is busy dying”, Dylan noted in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, his grim 1965 masterpiece about reinvention. Sixty years later, at a time when “everything is technology”, these words have particular resonance in Silicon Valley. As That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I discuss in our weekly roundup of tech news, every Big Tech firm - from OpenAI and Airbnb to YouTube and Netflix — is in the perpetual business of radical reinvention. It’s what Keith identifies as “the truth” of our technological age. Surviving this mayhem, then, requires not just perpetual birth, but also a lot of conscious dying. 5 takeaways* Keith Teare argues that "truth" can only meaningfully apply to facts and past events, not to opinions or future possibilities. He suggests that what becomes "true" is created after the fact through human actions and choices.* Our discussion explores how technological change is accelerating, with Paki McCormick's article "Everyth