Since the social web became big business, technology journalism has been spitting out ever more coverage. You don’t need to read most of it. But you should read this.
For at least five years, we’ve been working with the same operating logic in the consumer technology game. This is what it looks like:
There will be ratings and photos and a network of friends imported, borrowed, or stolen from one of the big social networks. There will be an emphasis on connections between people, things, and places. That is to say, the software you run on your phone will try to get you to help it understand what and who you care about out there in the world. Because all that stuff can be transmuted into valuable information for advertisers.
That paradigm has run its course. It’s not quite over yet, but I think we’re into the mobile social fin de siècle.
It’s by far the most refreshing take on the social-mobile-local paradigm that’s so rampant, and manages what very few authors manage in the midst of the digital revolution we are living through: put things in perspective. It’s a sobering read.