Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to see:
- Shifts in trade routes
- Loss of political capital status
- Slow environmental changes (silting harbors, soil exhaustion)
- Incremental population drift
Now, we can see it happening in a single generation. Rust Belt cities, projects in China, mining towns–they come and they go. The reasons are a bit different:
- Economic specialization
- Mobility
- Speed of technological change
- Capital flight
But I’m not writing about cities here. It’s a useful metaphor for software, online networks and the tools we use to do our jobs and live our digital lives.
Your ability to find a new game for your Amiga, or join a chat with your AOL buddies is mostly gone. I have no idea if it’s possible to log into myspace or second life, and my blog is no longer visible at Typepad. A relentless cycle of creative destruction, fueled by VC churn, technological advances and the network effect means that networks and software are growing faster than ever (an online network can become bigger than many countries in just a few weeks). But as these networks grow, they suck the energy out of the ones that came before.
Most of us, most of the time, are living in a ghost city.
Of course, as in almost all discussions, this is multiplied by a thousand when we add AI to the mix.
There are problems to consider and, perhaps, opportunities for contribution here.
DUMBER: In general, the arc of tools and networks that seek critical mass is to be simpler, easier to get started with and deskilled. The good news is that this gives more people a chance to participate. The bad news is that deskilling the user moves the power to the network creator. In a paint by numbers world, Picasso doesn’t often show up.
WASTE: Those old files, hard-won skills and valuable human networks from the old software stack are difficult and expensive to replace or reproduce. We’ve done almost nothing to increase adversarial interoperability and provide ownership and interchange for network users… because it’s not in the interest of the old network to make it easy for people to leave with their data, and the members of the new networks don’t care–until they become members of old networks.
AMNESIA: Not only do we lose access to our data and our social graph, we lose particular skills and the ability to pass them on to others. The new architects don’t know what we did, and since we’re often starting over, we reproduce past mistakes.
DECREASING VASTNESS: I got my first email address 50 years ago. During that lifetime online, there’s always been room for doubling. The speed of human connection, the size of the network, the bandwidth–it felt infinite, doubling every few years. But we’ve hit our last doubling. We can’t spend twice as much time online. We can’t double the number of people using the networks. We won’t notice if our bandwidth doubles…
Just as the westward expansion of Europeans in North America eventually hit the Pacific Ocean, sooner or later we have to settle in and make where we are better, not relentlessly head west.
The system is far more powerful than any individual. When a network or a software stack gains critical mass, there’s not a lot an isolated person can do about it. But just as LEED and and local building codes pushed architecture in a certain direction, organized individuals can create more digital resilience. Email’s persistence is a miracle, but that’s partly because standards bodies kept its API open and thriving.
We’re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic.
Software isn’t just a nerd in a basement writing code. It’s a craft. The UX and UI, the design of the data stack, the culture of the organization that builds and supports it–this is the architecture of our time. Except it’s not Frank Lloyd Wright building a few houses in Buffalo, it’s contagious.