No one knew what they are doing - remember “wisdom of the crowds”? Cynics and other cultures thought this was a pipe dream. But man, did it work at the start.

No one knew what they are doing - remember “wisdom of the crowds”? Cynics and other cultures thought this was a pipe dream. But man, did it work at the start. We all had hopes for the future. And for that bright moment, we do have the Silicon Valley of yore to thank. However, what’s not forgiveable is staying in the dark and not adapting. Especially if you land up on HN, Where pivot is a verb, mantra and well respected course of action. ———— Here’s what i postulate - Any sufficiently large network is a proxy for the underlying state of the population. At humanity scale this means that commerce is optimized, but then this (through attention farming) exacerbates human fault lines. It means that anonymity will always be misused by criminals and revolutionaries. As a result, there will always be a centralizing tendency that begins to apply on large networks. Only small inconsequential networks can avoid this. (Central tendency as in - government oversight and force to order chaotic activity online,) Any tool built must always play on this divide - increasing transparency and central control vs increasing anonymity and increasing the are of illegal behavior. —————- Most of this would be solved if print media were still a viable business. We generate tons of data, and content, sifting through it is impossible. But teams of editors and reliable news papers could once upon a time, do that. However it seems the information industry is suited for centralized, agenda dominated firms.