[antipotoad]

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.

[moe091]

> 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

[antipotoad]

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.