The Promise

We were told the internet would reshape institutions, societies, and mores. The internet would take the very foundation society is built upon and make it “better”.

Revolutions do not take place over a matter of days. Past revolutions stretched over a century. It took the internet revolution two decades to reshape our world and it’s evident we’ve yet to slow down. The revolution is chugging along and changing everything it touches.

No revolution, though, is free. Whether visible or hidden, there are prices to pay. Revolutions give birth to lots of good as well as bad. Change is guaranteed, but the type of change is not.

(Faux) Friction

The internet eliminated friction and in its place left convenience. A single click gave anyone, anytime, anywhere access to information at practically zero cost. Architects of this new world heralded frictionless convenience as innovations with no strings attached. It was only when we peeled back the curtain that we discovered faux friction.

The reality was, when it came to friction, we couldn’t have our cake and eat it too. There were different sets of trade-offs. And someone, somewhere, for two decades, made decisions creating rules for where friction should and should not be. These people weren’t evil. They were rational creatures cunning enough to calculate the payoff in order to make (faux) friction helpful and enjoyable.

Builders leaned into the pareto principle. They targeted the most frequently used processes in their products and services and eliminated friction one at a time. However, friction increased in those untargeted, rarely used processes. Resulting in a net friction increase across all processes.

It’s evident friction makes both the good and the terrible harder. Mission Just-Eliminate-Friction attaches a rocket to the good and the terrible. The past two decades made the ramifications of frictionlessness clearer. We started losing everything built on friction, including value, privacy, livelihoods, etc.

Deep Protocolization Supreme

“A cord of three strands is not quickly broken”.

Industrialization and globalization occurred not because of one technology but was driven by the convergence of multiple technologies. The internet has had a great run being the singular driving technology and remains the point of convergence. Deep protocalization was the meeting of AI, protocolizing technology such as blockchain, and the internet.

“Deep protocolization takes the familiar world we live in, and subjects it to two parallel transformation processes.

  1. It protocolizes familiar frictions, turning some aspects of technological experience into frictionless and unconscious ones.
  2. It deepens familiar affordances, turning some aspects of technological experience into subtly magical and superconscious ones.”

Deep protocalization is what allows us to slouch towards a world with a decrease in net friction. It is the next iteration of an ongoing tech revolution that will amplify its profound impact on society and the economy—where things seem to work and they do.

Reads

  1. Ribbonfarm Studio - Magic, Mundanity and Deep Protocolization
  2. Stratechery - Amazon, Friction, and the FTC
  3. Stratechery - An Interview With Marc Andreessen About AI and How You Change the World