That's really good. do you remember where you read that? I'd like to learn more about it.
I suspect we have a "Dunbar's number" for each major social context (and perhaps a Dunbar's number of contexts), and that proper digital tools can help tease out and augment that structure.
Man, wish I could find the exact reference for you. Swear it was in a Hacker News thread or something… which now that I think about it was more about loneliness, which is ironic right. The common thread here is that the more connected we are in a networked/online society a) the more we fight and b) the more isolated we get.
Pretty sure Putnam’s Bowling Alone was referenced, which was originally written in 1995. It talks about declines in civic engagement since the 60s. I find it super interesting to read 30 years later because it looks prescient, similar to something like Amusing Ourselves to Death which was also pre-internet.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The internet fundamentally changed human society because it changed who you could be connected with. But the problem that arised was that you couldn't reach other people based on the offline connections you already had and big tech / social media algos became the permanent proxies
This is a video not directly related to the topic we are discussing but opened my mind to why web of trust would be very very important for nostr. Also, with the advancements in AI, without WoT, you'd need more and more privacy invading stuff to keep the internet working which can't last very long
This video connects to the conversation. If everyone is hyperconnected, both from a network theory + math perspective, and we actualize it with a persistent connection in your pocket available 24/7…. Why would people end up more isolated and disagreeable?
I think there is something to the idea that technology itself satisfies so many of our idiosyncratic desires that we are increasingly having a harder time communicating. If you have 8 billion unique worldviews, each getting more fragmented… then conflict and the resulting isolation is a natural result.
