Tech isn’t (just) science, it’s culture

Modern technology journalism has its roots in science journalism – a development that makes complete sense from a historical standpoint. Because it was and still is the industry at the forefront of scientific breakthroughs. But over the last decades technology also became the way we communicate, how we meet friends, find jobs, work our jobs, consume media. In short: Technology is integral to human society. It’s also not a neutral medium. A mix of mostly ideology and also some technical constraints shape our every interaction with it.

That in itself is neither good or bad, it’s just the reality we live in – and also nothing new. Books shaped our perception of the world around us, as did movies, music and TV. But the way most reporting on tech is done doesn’t reflect the similarities. As you might have noticed I didn’t list games together with the other forms of entertainment – but they should! The things that Celeste or the vast empty world of Breath of the Wild made me feel rival the emotions and impact of other media. And yet they don’t get the same attention from culture critics.

Games journalism is banned to its own corner, with pay so bad that most people have to quit and the consequences are dire. There seems to be no cultural memory passed down to new authors. While you can study film, literature and music in five million different flavours, the same can’t be said for games. They are treated as a business and not an art form that should be explored and understood because it can teach us about humanity.

Games are just one example because the parallels to other art forms are easy to draw. But let’s just imagine what aspects of our modern technology will be interesting in the future? The first iPhone won’t be studied because of its capacitive touch screen but because it changed humanity. Sure, the technology achievements to get to the smartphone were immense, but the intangible way society shifted because everybody was suddenly online and reachable 24/7 is the true story here. Facebook isn’t interesting because of the way their PHP frameworks work, nobody cares about Spotify’s audio codec.

That’s not to say that anyone should feel bad because they like these details. They are fun to learn about and without the base knowledge it’s basically impossible to build on top of what we currently have. But it’s not the thing that’s impacting our everyday lives. There’s only one problem: Most technology journalism still has this very scientific view and that needs to change.

Most recently I spotted this discrepancy between society and tech journalists with the announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2. I saw so many reports that were mad that Nintendo didn’t provide technical details. Is the chip faster? Does the GPU support DLSS? Is it OLED or not? And the truth is: The buyers do not give a shit. The first Switch was outdated on arrival. It still was a success. Because Nintendo deeply understands humans.

What they deliver are games made for the whole family with guaranteed safety from scams or online groomers. They are well made, well polished and something you can have fun with or even more importantly: Hand it over to your kid without having to worry. The Switch 2 announcement showed exactly what people need to know: It’s larger, so it probably will fit in your hands and it has a new Mario Kart. It will be sold out for months.

That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be articles, videos and podcasts about the technical specs. Count all the teraflops if you want. But there also should be more. Traditional culture journalism would do deep dives on how the first Switch changed how the society interacts with games because you could bring them everywhere. How did that fact influence game design? What does it say about humanity that this portable device is so successful? Was it because ever-rising rents in cities meant longer commutes and thus it’s worth to bring a game console? Is it because the smartphones and streaming meant that fewer people have televisions? Or is it because newer generations value individual experiences and having an integrated screen means that one could play Zelda while their partner watched Game of Thrones?

I don’t have the answers, but all of these are stories with far more impact than a story about DLSS and frame generation could lead raytraced mirror reflections of your dong in Cyberpunk, because they could be a sign of cultural shifts and changes. That’s why I want more tech reporters to see themselves as culture journalists rather than science journalists. Because we need people who know the nitty gritty details of technology to tell a cultural stories. The exact same way we need people who know about music to write about it. Because a good article or review isn’t just a buying guide, it tells us more about humanity itself and helps us to figure out the world we live in.

And to be clear: Journalism like this exists at places like 404 Media, Aftermath and many others. I myself work for Breitband, a kind of tech show from Deutschlandfunk Kultur, a German broadcaster focused on culture journalism. (So yes, my opinion here is biased.) But I do think we need more of this. And not just for Tech sites to broaden their horizons to cover more cultural topics but also for traditional newspapers and other media to open up their cultural sections for technology journalists. Because the intersection between those two things is shaping our society and we need to explore what this means.