> there are countless opportunities for valuable revenue-generating products that aren't based on dopamine addiction and/or ad tech.

Perhaps a bit of a hot take but I’d be inclined to disagree. The boom in big tech is I think almost exclusive driven by dopamine, brain rot and ad tech either directly or indirectly. Meta and Google - almost entirely ad funded. Netflix - binge watching and they’re trying hard to force more ads in. Apple makes the black rectangle to watch the content and ads - without the iPhone 1 doomscrolling wouldn’t be a thing. Amazon runs an ad empire, produces video content for binge watching and has a store designed to maximise consumerism and retail therapy.

Even the portions that are more infra like AWS - I’d bet a large portion of that fulfilling demand by things that are part of the attention/dopamine economy. All those TikTok dances aren’t served off a raspberry pi.

Don’t get me wrong not trying to discount tech as not having genuine ethical value or opportunities not existing. But the explosive growth seen in tech over past 20 years specifically is I think almost exclusively driven by adtech and attention economy.

And if that reaches saturation either this changes tracks to similar on AI or the growth plateaus. Other value creation certainly exists and is valid but I don’t see it filling the shoes of adtech.

Google and meta indirectly acknowledged the problem years ago already with their balloons over Africa to connect more eyeballs to the internet plan. If you can’t force feed more ads to current user base then you need more users. It’s telling I think that a wild plan like balloons in Africa was the plan selected, rather than going for the countless other valuable opportunities as you say. Speaks to the relative profitability