What would we have created on social media if we had understood the trades we were making from the beginning?
Social media generates the same volume of information as can be found in the Library of Congress, and then repopulates it every three to six days.
When we all received our invites to Facebook, we thought we were entering a giant public square. We missed the memo that we were also entering an attention market. Imagine knowing that on day one.
What could we have created for others on social media if we had known the trade explicitly, and so had the insight to optimize away the attention issues while leaning into the connection that was offered? What community might you have built, and how could you have served others? What boundaries might you have set before dependence made those boundaries harder to create?
If we had understood the arrangement, I think we would have entered differently and more powerfully. And I think social media would look a lot different today.
AI is giving us a similar threshold, with the option to understand before we immerse. The abundance AI lets us access is staggering. It is life-changing technology. And this time, many pieces of the larger game are already visible, so the future of these tools is neither natural nor inevitable.
This time, we can walk in awake, and learn to leverage the benefits of AI while dancing away from the concerning elements that come with it.