You don’t have to save the world with your gadget

And I really wish you would stop pretending you can. There is nothing wrong with someone having that little thing that makes people happy to use it. As a company, you don’t have to pretend you’re doing anything other than creating cool little things that people will enjoy. Because when you pretend otherwise, you might sound a little stupid.

Namely: DC1 daylight. It is a tablet with a screen resembling e-ink. It’s similar to the Kindle, for example, but can reportedly refresh at a speed that allows it to display videos and other graphics that aren’t currently available on e-ink devices. It seems like a potentially neat little device, combining the ease of reading and long battery life of e-ik devices with the interactivity of devices like the iPad. Like I said, neat. Probably not $729 neat, but still: neat.

And that should be enough! It’s good to do neat things! We all like neat things! But the CEO of the company that makes it apparently can’t just do the cool thing. No, it has to change the world in some way. See, it doesn’t emit much blue light either. Blue light is said to be – although the science behind it is uncertain – making it harder to sleep and increasing eye strain. This lack of blue light will apparently contribute to the growth of great literature in the world.

Not seriously:

Daylight CEO Anjan Katta said he started the company to help combat eye strain and distraction, and to try to completely redefine our relationship with gadgets. He’s been doing a lot of poetry in recent months – particularly on crypto-friendly podcasts; Katta is clearly a big fan of Bitcoin — when it comes to the problems of modern devices. “I like to think about it,” he said on the show Healthier technology last year’s podcast “What would have happened to, for example, Tolstoy if he had grown up like this. What would happen to Maya Angelou if she had a distracting blue light phone? Would she still be able to write the poetry she created?

This is nuts. I promise you, man, Maya Angelou would feel good if there was some blue light in her life. And even if you want to argue that our devices are distracting, it’s because the software on them is designed to engage and distract us. Something that a piece of hardware will have limited impact on at best.

This kind of nonsense is infecting the business world, especially the tech business world. Everything will change the world. Everything is earth-shattering. Everything is more important than the last thing. Some of this is, of course, self-serving. If Uber for Guillotines is going to change the world and is the most important thing ever, then who the hell is the government to regulate it?

I think a big part of this absurd view is the desperate desire to pretend they matter. They cannot or do not accept the idea that every human being is inherently important, so they must justify to themselves and to us why they deserve the money, power and recognition that capitalism provides them. It cannot be a function of luck and systematic force. No, they must be more important than doctors, teachers and firefighters! Must be! After all, that’s what they are removing blue light from the world! Maja Angela depends on them! Do not understand?!?

People have value simply by being human. Participating in society, treating each other well, trying to make the world a little nicer every day – that is enough, worthy enough. Not everyone has the calling and temperament to become a doctor, teacher or firefighter. Some people tinker. Some people create. Some people simply take a job to pay for living and devote their passions to hobbies, friends or family. And the world becomes better thanks to all these people. It would be even better if some business people looked at teachers, nurses and firefighters and thought, “Good job, thank you!” instead of: “I have to prove that I am better than them!”

Maya Angelou would understand.