It's interesting. Historically there have always been these sort of back channel, side channel, unofficial ways of doing all sorts of things, some of them basic

It's interesting. Historically there have always been these sort of back channel, side channel, unofficial ways of doing all sorts of things, some of them basically critical to the operation of a functional society. Yet as society has become more developed we tend to formalize the "official" ways of doing things while pretending that everything else was irrelevant (or, worse, harmful). And then life becomes more restricted with less room for imagination and exploration, with obvious negative consequences for innovation, among many other things. It may not be possible to maintain all of the unofficial side channels and so forth as things advance but it's critical that people think about them and be thoughtful about how to replace them.