Super Apps Are Terrible for People—and Great for Companies

Where will we see luxury software transform markets? Already, in the consumer productivity space, we’re starting to see “luxury” email clients, calendars, browsers, and search engines emerge. While all of these capabilities are freely accessible to consumers and rather commoditized, companies like Superhuman for email, Cron (now Notion) for calenda... See more

- "conscious self-branding — an exhausting obligation for many under current labor market conditions — is in tension with its underlying structure of ubiquitous surveillance: how strategically one chooses to present oneself now inescapably occurs within this unchosen context of being tracked and documented and predicted. The efforts made to avoid d... See more

Yet the cultural dominance of the iPhone — and the transformation of the open internet into “walled gardens” and apps focused on simplifying the user experience — has taken the “triumph of seamless usability” to a new level. This “tyranny of convenience,” to borrow Tim Wu’s phrase , should sensitize us to what may be lost when democratization proc

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