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I think about things like this sometimes when I hear people say they want to change the world. What they mean is that they want to change the world in a way tha
by sgentle 15y ago
I think about things like this sometimes when I hear people say they want to change the world. What they mean is that they want to change the world in a way that they can imagine, but the law of unintended consequences won't let you off that easy.
Was some Google engineer thinking in 2005, "implementing chat logging in GMail is going to change the world!" I doubt it, but for these people it is a changed world. What looks from one angle like appending lines to a table somewhere, from another looks like your own personal biographer taking snapshots frozen in time.
- ethank 15y agoI have a discussion board that I've run for over ten years. While I'm not as invested in running it anymore, the reason I keep it online and active and maintained is because it contains within it the narrative histories of a group of people. These histories have ended up in marriages, babies, deaths and friendships. I think people don't often consider text on screen to be as meaningful as it is.