Communication in World 2.0

Large parasocial platforms transformed the internet into a hostile and impersonal place. They feed our FOMO to keep us clicking. They exaggerate our differences for "engagement". They create engines for stardom to keep us creeping. They bait us into nutritionless and sensationalist content. Humanity cannot subsist on hype alone.

Small and sincere co... See more

social interaction in any medium is always a balance between self-expression and the accommodation of others, which means that in the analog world it is a constant struggle to strike a balance between being myself and annoying everyone around me at some point or another. The magic of the Internet, though, is that you can be whatever you want to be

In order to imagine where the future is headed, let’s first lay out the three main steps of connection building to examine how the physical and digital worlds fare at each:

• Discovery : you find someone you want to meet, or that person finds you 


• Connection : some initial contact is established


• Connection strengthening : further interactions st

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As far as how humans connect to one another, what’s next appears to be group chats and private messaging and forums, returning back to a time when we mostly just talked to the people we know. Maybe that’s a better, less problematic way to live life. Maybe feed and algorithms and the “global town square” were a bad idea. But I find myself desperatel... See more

The goal of the metaverse is not to build technology for people to interact with; but rather, build technology for people to interact with each otherSpatial audio and eye contact technology are just two features to drastically improve on current video meeting technology, for exampleEstablishing a presence is the most difficult problem

This isn’t new to culture — this is culture. The difference is that software now mediates a significant share of our experience within and between worlds. And software that affords presence or spatial awareness — from a simple video chat app to a more immersive game-like product — can establish a type of proximity between individuals, or even betwe... See more