So to answer your question: it’s early. We are barely a decade into the modern era. The most popular applications are early and, I would argue, fundamentally flawed. Take Twitter, which is probably the most visible example of both the good and bad of the modern internet. On the good side: I can look down on my phone and see the most interesting tho... See more

One thing that complicates people’s willingness to devote their energy to vibrancy is context collapse, a term that Alice Marwick and I coined long ago. When a social media site grows slow and steady, it starts out for each user as a coherent context. Things get dicy over time as people struggle to figure out how to navigate divergent networks. But... See more

In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.

Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrialized farms with lit... See more