Technology Adoption and The “Get Over It” Strategy

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In 1999, Scott McNealy sat down for an interview with Wired magazine. The founder of Sun Microsystems was sharing his perspective on privacy, encryption technology, and government surveillance. McNealy argued that the internet was making traditional notions of personal privacy obsolete. As he so succinctly put it, “You have zero privacy… get over it.”

McNealy’s declaration reflected a widely held belief in Silicon Valley: that technological capability should set the boundary for social expectation. Tech is going to do what it’s going to do, and we just have to let it.

Of course, that’s not what happened. California instituted the Consumer Privacy Act, giving state residents the right to know what personal data is being collected about them, to delete it, and to opt out of its sale. The European Court of Justice ruled that people have a right to be forgotten, removing old or irrelevant information from major platforms. Apple has made privacy a core part of its value proposition. We didn’t get over it, not really.

That’s a lesson that leaders would be wise to keep in mind this year. Over the next twelve months, we’ll see a host of new technologies move out of the lab and into people’s homes. Artificial intelligence is moving beyond chatbots to act as agents that make decisions on our behalf. Self-driving cars will expand to more cities. Humanoid robots will start trying to do our household chores. And cryptocurrency, bruised but persistent, will continue to look for its big comeback.

The success of these technologies will depend on whether their creators can overcome significant technical challenges. But they’ll also depend on whether people are willing to adopt them. While some of us will embrace these new technologies with open arms, many of us will feel weirded out when an innovation violates deeply held beliefs around issues like privacy, safety, and even collective guilt over slavery. Success depends on whether we can move past these issues.

I like to think of new innovations as lying along a “Get Over It” spectrum. There are innovations that people eventually adopt. There are some that we reject. And there are others that are rejected so strongly as to poison the well for years to come.

Getting Over It

Of course, sometimes we get over it, and sometimes we don’t. And the difference between those two outcomes is where a great deal of value gets created or destroyed.

When the first iPhone was announced in 2007, Steve Jobs gave a sneak preview to a few of his favorite tech journalists. Their reaction was far from unanimous awe. After all, many of them were devoted users of the BlackBerry. They were accustomed to having their thumbs tap out long notes on a physical keyboard. And while the iPhone’s smooth glass screen was beautiful, it lacked a tactile interface. 

Midway through Jobs’s presentation, one journalist frowned. “It doesn’t work. I keep getting typos… the keyboard’s too small for my thumbs.”

Jobs paused and sighed. “Your thumbs will learn.”

In retrospect, Jobs was right. The journalist got over it. We all did. It turns out that we were willing to change our behavior because the benefit to us was worth the tradeoff. Moreover, the number of people who had used a physical keyboard on a smartphone was dwarfed by the number of people who had never used a smartphone at all. And those new users didn’t have any prior hangups.

Not Getting Over It

Too often, a glib insistence to get over it can lead to a massive backlash. When Google Glass appeared, the problem wasn’t battery life or resolution. It was social. Wearing augmented reality glasses didn’t just change the behavior of the wearer; it changed how everyone else felt, too. The glasses made people seem disconnected from the world around them. Many observers worried that Google Glass wearers were surreptitiously recording them. Bars posted signs banning it. Strangers recoiled. The nickname “glasshole” spread faster than the product. Google treated the backlash as temporary ignorance. People would get used to it. They didn’t. Glass failed because it violated an unspoken agreement about consent and surveillance. The resistance wasn’t about usability. It was about dignity.

Really, Really Not Getting Over It

And then there’s the kind of not getting over it that can set back a technology for a generation. There is no greater example than genetically modified crops. In the mid‑1990s, Monsanto was among the earliest pioneers of GM crops. Bob Shapiro, its CEO, believed deeply in what the technology could make possible. He spoke about sustainability and feeding a growing world, and early on, the optimism seemed justified. Genetically modified seeds promised higher yields and lower pesticide use. Wall Street hailed Monsanto as the Microsoft of biotechnology. And while Shapiro was candid about the technology’s uncertain reception, he was confident that good science would eventually win public acceptance.

What followed was a profound misread. Monsanto moved quickly and assertively, treating labeling, regulation, and public concern as obstacles rather than signals. In Europe, where food is bound up with culture and trust, and where confidence in regulators was already shaken, the company’s certainty felt less like reassurance than arrogance. “Frankenfood” became a rallying cry, markets closed, and opposition hardened. In the end, Monsanto didn’t just stumble; it set progress back for a generation. The science may have been right, but the social license was never secured, and people never got over it.

How Much Would You Pay?

Today, we’re no longer debating keyboards or crop yields. We’re talking about AI that replaces cognitive labor, robots that mimic human form, and gene-editing tools that alter people rather than plants. The temptation is to point to past successes and assume the same arc will repeat. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. For each technology, it depends on where we are on the “Get Over It” spectrum.

The leaders who navigate these shifts won’t just demand that people get over it. They’ll ask what kind of objection they’re facing. Is it a habit that can be retrained, or a value that’s being threatened? Is the benefit personal and obvious, or abstract and asymmetrical? Does adoption ask for minor adjustment, or a rewrite of identity? Time alone doesn’t legitimize technology. Consent does.

I recently had the chance to speak with Stuart Russell on the Jump Podcast. Stuart is a professor at UC Berkeley and one of the world’s most influential AI researchers. He’s also one of the clearest thinkers about the gap between what AI can do and what people actually want it to do. 

Stuart argues that most of us don’t actually desire to live in the kind of future that AI promises. By and large, we like our jobs and don’t want to be replaced. We enjoy creative expression and aren’t looking to have it automated for us. And while we can certainly appreciate the benefits that AI is already making—such as discovering new antibiotics—that doesn’t mean that we’re ready to trade away everything for it. In reality, there’s a small group of powerful technology inventors and investors who do want that future, and they’re making decisions on our behalf. AI-driven layoffs and job reductions have already begun, framed as efficiency gains and futureproofing. The rest of us may have deep reservations about that, but we just have to get over it.

To bring home the point, Stuart posed a simple question: “Do you like to eat ice cream?”

Like a lot of people, I had to say yes.

“Great,” he said. “So how much would you be willing to pay to have a robot eat ice cream on your behalf?”

I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. And I got the point. I like ice cream. And I’m not getting over it.