The reason I call this Web2.5 is because the Substacks and Patreons are open but not interoperable. There’s nothing stopping me from downloading my Substack subscribers and posts and manually moving to a new platform. The data is accessible but not interoperable, and that makes all the difference when it comes to building the internet of tomorrow.
Similarly, signaling pre and post-internet evolves too. Pre-internet signaling was all about IRL flashiness (a Louis Vuitton bag) while post-internet signaling is about digitally-native flashiness (a Cryptopunk NFT).
On one hand, the internet has become a foundational part of where we experience life. But on the other, it’s made our experience of the world more isolated. And this has impactful consequences on our ability to empathize with one another. Over the next decade, not only will you discover more of your life experiences on the internet, you’ll consume... See more