aAfter three years, over 100 issues, two parental leaves, two AI summits and a cycle of cryptocurrency booms and busts, this will be my last newsletter. It also marks the end of 11 years at The Guardian. My first day was the launch of the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 16 launches on September 9th. It’s been an eventful time.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been asking readers for questions and I’ve been bombarded with them. I apologize if I wasn’t able to answer all of your questions, but I’m so grateful to everyone who asked.

What was the most shocking thing you discovered in the TechScape study/report? – Alexandria Weber

In 2019, I received leaked internal TikTok moderation documents that revealed for the first time that the company had a written, global policy to enforce Chinese foreign policy on its platform. According to the leaks, the company censored videos that mentioned Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, and the banned religious group Falun Gong.

TikTok argued that the document was outdated at the time and had been revoked several months ago, replaced with new, more locally sensitive guidelines. As a sign of the direction the company was heading, it was a good sign. But the leak remains grounds for concern to this day that the company may not be all that independent from the Chinese government.

Computer Scientist Ray Kurzweil He says that within 20 years, we will have the ability to replicate the human mind with a computer.including all memories, Their personalities and Consciousness. Do you think this claim is credible? – David

Kurzweil’s “singularity” has been around 20 years into the future for the past 30 years, so I don’t see much reason to attach much importance to his predicted date, but my bigger issue with his predictions is that the order has changed somewhat over the last few years.

The traditional singularity theory holds that computers will continue to get faster and faster until they are finally fast enough to mimic the brain, at which point uploading will become possible. This is because AI will continue to become more and more powerful, eventually AI Solving the problem of uploading human brains.

In that vision of the future, brain uploading will only be possible after a superintelligent AI has already been created and remade the world. That seems like an odd thing to focus on.

Do you think Facebook and Google have peaked?and slowly but inevitably slide towards relative insignificance? – Bernie

Never say never. Companies are constantly reinventing themselves. Of course, the tech industry is the best example of this. Apple almost lost its leading position in the 1990s, but has since made a remarkable comeback, from the iMac to the iPhone. Meta and Google are both competing to assume leadership positions in AI, which could once again make them some of the most important companies on the planet.

But I agree with the premise of the question: excitement and attention around technology is shifting, and Google and Meta’s existing businesses are on the downside of that shift. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Google Search will continue to make money for the foreseeable future, but none of them are at the exciting forefront of their industries anymore.

And, of course, it’s hard not to peak when your company is the fourth or sixth largest in the world – there’s only so much room to “rise” further.

Where is the smartphone going from here? How can new smartphone models differentiate themselves from other models? – John Brown

The boring but true answer is that foldable phones will steadily fall in price and improve in quality until hardware design creativity suddenly blossoms again. Samsung has led the way with two approaches: the clamshell-style Flip, popular around the time of the Olympics, and the folio-style Fold. The screen technology is still not perfect—there’s a noticeable bump in the middle of the unfolded phone—and prices range from high to eye-wateringly expensive, but the devices are the only truly novel design the industry has seen in the past decade.

Then, in a year or two, Apple will release a foldable phone and everyone will know it exists.

The atmosphere surrounding technology seems to have changed dramatically over the last five years or so. There seems to be more anxiety about how technology will develop. Society is deteriorating, and few people are optimisticDo you think the industry can overcome it? – Ido Vock

I think the tech industry is in a very similar place to where the finance industry was 15 years ago. It will continue to attract smart, talented people because the work is interesting and the pay is good, but the atmosphere has clearly changed. I don’t think the industry can turn back the clock, but I wonder how much it needs to. Money solves a lot of problems, and it’s better to be rich than to be optimistic.

The real question for me is whether these changes in technology threaten to spill over into widespread skepticism about the whole notion of science and technology improving the world. I hope not. I remain fundamentally optimistic about human progress and think some of the upcoming breakthroughs in areas like health, green energy, and even space flight will be exciting.

The Greatest Game of All Time (And Why It’s the Best) Soulsborne)? – Chris M

For those unfamiliar, Soulsborne games are a genre created by developer FromSoftware and its director Hidetaka Miyazaki, characterized by a punishing difficulty curve, an indirect narrative structure, and a tone that can be memorably summed up as “a goddamn little man snickering at you from behind a locked door.” I personally have a soft spot for the series’ Bloodborne, which released on PlayStation 4 in 2015, but I’ve just spent 50 hours playing the latest Soulsborne entry, Elden Ring, and it’s fantastic.

But the greatest game of all time is still The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Six years on from the release of the Switch and the console’s defining launch title, nothing has yet surpassed that game, not even its perfect sequel, Tears of the Kingdom. That said, Elden Ring is a great game for adults who feel embarrassed about playing an all-ages title, but it does have a bit of a goth Zelda about it.

If I continue any more I’ll have to co-brand my last newsletter with Pushing Buttons, so I’d like to stop here.

During the time you’ve worked in this role, what’s the best example of where technology has made a real, valuable, positive difference to the world? – Steve Parks

In my professional life, the answer is undoubtedly machine transcription. It’s not flashy, but being able to generate imperfect real-time transcripts from recorded interviews is truly transformative for reporting, speeding up the process of turning an idea into a published news story by hours.

More broadly, I think the rise of machine translation is a similar answer. These tools have improved slowly and steadily over the past 20 years, to the point where a significant portion of humanity is now able to communicate with one another in a basically intelligible way, in near real time. One of the most interesting consequences of this is that, at least in the short term, nothing has actually changed: language ability is still valuable, people still consume content primarily in their own language or that has been professionally translated, and online communities have not consolidated into one giant global conglomerate.

Maybe it will be. Or maybe this science fiction-turned-reality technology will continue to be useful mainly for making my holidays more comfortable and for reading funny Bluesky posts from Japan.

What’s next? Thank you to all 17 readers

After 11 years at The Guardian, I’m not jumping right into another job and will be taking six weeks off. In the meantime, you can keep in touch with me on these unconventional social networks: Blue Sky or Backlog; I don’t plan on returning to writing a weekly newsletter anytime soon, but I do plan to post occasional round-up articles if you’re interested in occasional updates on where I’ve posted articles. My dormant Substack.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting so many of you TechScape readers over the years, and thank you for reading, emailing, sharing your stories, and continuing to support me. I have some great writers who will be taking over for me.