Sixian

These semi-pseudonymous networks have strong enough network effects to fend off the competition because they’ve given their users a persistent online identity to which they commit. As social creatures, people are emotionally invested in creating, building, and maintaining their reputations — even if that reputation is semi-virtual.

In the past, our timekeeping systems were synchronized with the systems of the earth. The rhythms and seasons of nature help us orient and make sense of when we are. Digital media has warped our subjective sense of time and thrown us into a state of atemporal confusion. Aside from surface-level features like “dark mode,” digital temporality is... See more

"Each individual categorization scheme is worth less than a professional categorization scheme. But there are many, many more of them." If you find a way to make it valuable to individuals to tag their stuff, you'll generate a lot more data about any given object than if you pay a professional to tag it once and only once. And if you can find any... See more

Secondly, your strengths to distribution increasingly get fragmented. So in the early days of streaming Spotify as the leader was the dominant platform, but we've seen not only other large leading streaming platforms develop and we can get into that dynamic because that's a very interesting part of the market as well, but we've now started to see... See more

This slipping-away of knowledge is always happening. It happens in our minds, as memories fade. But arguably, we don’t need to retain all knowledge.

Web 3 & When Platform Participants Become Platform Owners

We’re building edgeless environments of divergency. Things are added in chaos, then if successful, they expanded further and further out until they collapse and rearrange. This is probably why responsive design feels so relevant, maddening, and divisive: its patterns mimic the larger patterns of technology itself.

The “conversational web”. A web obsessed with arguing points. A web seen as a tool for self-expression rather than a tool for thought. A web where you weld information and data into your arguments so that it can never be repurposed against you. The web not as a reconfigurable model of understanding but of sealed shut presentations. And a web that... See more

Many Founders have a fantasy that data will be an ongoing insight engine — that as they collect more and more data, they will get more and more insights that will give their startup an ongoing advantage.