We will look back on the 2010’s as an era of growth, excitement, and innovation around the internet and social platforms.
But the history book’s documentation of the 2020’s will evoke grief and regret about the harms and externalities of our “innovation.”
Debates rage on as culture wars effect moderation policies, design philosophies, and profit incentives for tech companies. As both sides seek to create “freedom” for their constituents by taking control of the whole project by either blowing the whole thing open or micro-managing its cancerous effects, both sides rearrange ships on the titanic.
Policy won’t stop the way our society has superficially come to “like” or “dislike” its reality. Healthy conversation about social media use won’t stop the ways our algorithms push us further and further away from agreement on any topic or idea. “Free expression” (whether in its caustic form on the right or in its pandering form on the left) won’t stop the enslavement of a generation to the form technology takes.
As the ledger of harms grows long and the decision-makers and arbiters of truth grow distracted, the 20’s are setup to be a decade where just one feeling is reflected back to us through its often revisited Wikipedia page: regret.
