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LM: #343: Remembrances of Web 2.0
Through sheer happenstance, I found myself in Silicon Valley, circa 2005–2007. What was then known as “Web 2.0” is now what we now refer to – often with derisive stank – as social media.
Meetro.com/Women 2.0 pool party, August 26, 2006 – the friends I made threw a party in my honor because I apparently looked like the “40-Year-Old Virgin”
It’s not surprising social media became a big deal, if for no other reasons than I personally found exciting how it broke me out of my Nebraska shell and there was electricity in the air, but I don’t think anyone expected it to turn out like this.
How could it possibly shape politics negatively, stoking tribalism, brewing divisions, becoming a vector for inter-state meddling, and creating the perfect conditions for mis- and dis-information?
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Surely it was for connecting people around shared interests – no way would it form millions-to-one parasocial relationships and “influencers” would be more interesting to us than our real friends and family.
No way it would become dominated by one or two giants. Surely there would be room for all the fun little networks that popped up, like Dogster, Catster, and Consumating.
At the time, if you came to Silicon Valley to get rich, you would be laughed at. The pain of the dot-com bust was still fresh. Joining a startup was certainly not the respectable alternative, to coastal elites, to investment banking or becoming a lawyer.
We were just excited to use technology to meet people and put together parties.
What passed for a cell-phone photo I took at the “Flickr turns 2” party, February 11, 2006
Overall, it’s been a positive contribution to humanity – some forget, are too young to remember, or were born into a physical location that suited them.
Though the biggest surprise that’s dawning on me is maybe we didn’t want to meet like-minded people after all. Maybe we just want the information that serves us, whether for utility or self-validation, and if there’s a real person purveying it or it’s attached to a relationship, that heretofore has just been an inescapable inconvenience.
But I hope I’m wrong.
Aphorism: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” —Herb Stein
Cool: The Case Against Superintelligence is Cal Newport’s detailed podcast-take on why fears of rogue AI are overblown.
Best,
David
P.S. Thank you to Sagar Soni for having me on the Beyond the Speech podcast.
