1. The big players are dominating the field  The startup community in Silicon Valley and cities around the world is still vibrant and full of new hits, but the big players are regularly flooding our collective consciousness with new products and innovations that are dazzling, but not necessarily industry-changing. Among the establishment innovators are likes of  Mark Zuckerberg  (Facebook, Oculus) and  Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin), both dutifully shepherding us into the future. But the kind of fiery trailblazing we came to expect from Jobs is absent in their well-produced and shareholder-sensitive advances.  Yes, there's always Mars-obsessed  Elon Musk  (Tesla, SpaceX), but his self-driving, robotic spacecraft ambitions are decades-long bets, rather than the more immediate disruptions Jobs often delivered.  2. Cynicism is clogging the wheels of tech optimism For a sense of where our pop culture sensibilities are regarding the tech world, we ne...