For the web, the glass is half full

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I like what Robin Sloan had to say in his blog post, ‘A Year of New Avenues’. It’s typeset in Filosofia, which is another great reason to read it.

I’ve often said the trends of a new decade, or century, don’t emerge on the dot. You’ve got to get a few years in for them to become apparent. (Some even argue that we should look at decades beginning midway, e.g. 1975 to 1984, to identify groups of trends.)

Robin believes that the platforms of the 2010s are history.

And just as I’ve drawn parallels between 1973 and 2022, Robin feels that 2023 is going to have some of the energy of 2003, as far as the internet is concerned:

It is 2003 again. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram haven’t been invented yet … except, it’s also 2023, and they have, so you can learn from their rise and ruin …

As the platforms of the last decade crumble, we might put “founder” culture back on the shelf …

I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet. At last, in 2023, I want to tell the tech CEOs and venture capitalists: pipe down. Buzz off. Go fave each other’s tweets.

There’s more good stuff after that, which I’ll leave you to read. It’s a glass-half-full world of where the web can head, and if Robin’s even half-right, then it’s going to be an upbeat time for creative people.