The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.
My bet would be that the next big social platform will come about when Apple and Google agree an open messaging platform for Android and iOS.
That will at a stroke provide an alternative network to Whatsapp available on every phone and desktop.
Apple is currently resistant but I think they'll come round to the idea once they realise that that they can pretty easily displace Meta from day to day messaging.
Hmm. Think you could be right. Question to me is whether they can provide anything compelling beyond stability of identity / ease of connection. That would itself be pretty huge though, so is maybe enough to displace WhatsApp and the like.
My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.
Is it really good for human psychology to have these hyper-connected, star-maker platforms so prominent in our lives? Online fame does very strange things to people, warping the way they interact with their actual physical surroundings, and the real people who inhabit them. Brings to mind the girl doing her TikTok dance in the middle of a lecture. It’s quite bizarre, but worth trying to understand.
Anyhow, none of this is to disagree with you, sadly. Except to say, I think there is also appetite for more humane technology, which doesn’t try to sink such deep hooks into us.
> My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.
This is how progress usually works. Advancements are made, there are pitfalls / consequences, we learn from those, then new advancements are made.
The modern age is progressing too quickly though, it's just "advancements are made, people just barely begin recognizing the downsides, new advancements are made way before we adapt to the previous advancements". The life of someone from 1700 vs someone from 1850 is more similar than the life of someone from 1990 to 2020
This is essentially why I decided not to give up on all these years of experience building tech.
Not to claim any special insight, but taking just a couple years out has been enough to see that the flaws of the current generation are not inherent to the tech, that things can be built differently, and that I can be a hopefully more mindful builder.
The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.