when we think about the structure of social media, or the way communication works in general, our main concerns are the long-term ones. we want stuff that promotes human flourishing, and does not promote social control by large power structures.
fundamentally, the promise of the internet was always new ways to communicate, that could reshape society
the Gutenberg printing press upended the world, in a good way, it was a victory for love, curiosity, and justice, but it was not without its limitations. newspapers are still very large power structures, they liberate but they also control
we are fortunate enough to live during another mass literacy event. they're quite rare. they're extremely disruptive.
we would very much like to do everything we can to head off problems future generations will have. whatever failures we make over the next decade or two, there's a risk of them crystallizing into rigid structures that won't change for a much longer time.
so when we evaluate communication platforms as they come out, it's really the long view we must have in our mind... which is why we focus on things that must seem like incredibly abstract and trivial concerns to most people
in discussion on the thread version of this post, over on fedi, a younger friend asked us to clarify what we mean by "literacy", so we'll talk about that a bit.
when the Gutenberg press became a thing, more people learned to read and write. drastically more. for the majority of human history it had been a skill only a small percentage of people had.
the internet built on that existing base of reading and writing skill, enabling long-distance communication to be drastically cheaper, more frequent, and more detailed. from a social perspective we see that as analogous in its transformative potential.
this may not be obvious to everyone, but we were alive before that social change properly took off. we saw what the world was like without this kind of communication, and then we saw the changes get really sudden. we agree that things today have slowed down a bit, but we don't see them as over, not by a long shot.
the stuff we call "social media" is just one ripple in the larger wave-pattern. online communication has taken several entirely different shapes over the years.
people also may not realize just how impactful it was having... even just email, even without an always-on connection, even in its non-internet forms. prior to email, long-distance communication would have had to be by phone, telegram (largely disused by then, but still extant), or paper mail. staying in touch with family members on the other side of the world got drastically easier, even when people didn't log on every day.
the web was another big change, because now people could put together large bundles of information and give them to a niche audience far more easily and cheaply. the previous strategy was mostly paper zines made by hand with xerox or mimeograph machines and sent through postal mail, and the difficulty of letting people know it existed in the first place was a big limiter on its utility.
our goal here is just to start people thinking about all this, and to have a piece we can refer to to explain why we care about the small stuff. we've done that, and we don't have a good wrap-up, so we'll close with a thought from another friend:
society today assumes that everyone is critically literate. the designs we see in digital media rely very heavily on that assumption.
the data says the assumption is simply untrue... but the designs still have an effect, whether people understand it or not.
the spectre of the enlightenment still haunts us today, the failings of the past continuing to shape the ways we communicate and the challenges we encounter. presumably, we will continue to be haunted that until we fix the error.
[based on a thread posted in November 2024 at https://adhd.irenes.space/@ireneista/statuses/01JDB9E2VB14YT7VMFTV4N23GZ]