Thinking about the stuff I've posted here that would have blown my mind 20 years ago, and the expectation I had that this stuff would create amazing new worlds. What did create amazing new worlds, rather than just fun things, or (not to slight them) new tools?

• social networks

... and maybe that's it. Everything that created a new world was in some sense a social network.

• FB, Twitter, etc
• Github
• Forums
• MMOs
• I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out here ...

Well, okay. Maybe it's not so clear-cut. Electronic music is a new world that, yeah, had a physical world substrate, but largely it was a shared imaginative space enabled by new tools. You could call the social network here labels / clubs / magazines but that's a much looser more porous sort of network than the very explicit networks in the first list. That network already existed, dance music wasn't new ... but new tools enabled a whole new world within it.

last modified: 00:40:23 02-May-2022
in categories:Tech/Social