Ha, I kicked off this discussion and then disappeared for a couple weeks of vacation. But I’m back now and I’m still interested in exploring this topic with you all.
I do find this both a helpful reminder of what’s been the same, going back as far as computers have been networked.
I remember when the internet was new, and the talking heads on the evening news were trying to help people understand what it was. Surfin’ the net and e-commerce, and what not. When people’s main worry about Amazon was the impact it’d have on the local bookstores.
And yeah, I was typing into boxes where messages reached other users on gopher, usenet, AIM, ICQ, etc, but I was also waiting my turn to use the phone line to get connected with a beep and a bop before I could read those messages or type in those boxes.
The experience now is certainly different.
I rewinded back more than 10 years there, but I do feel the same way when looking back only that far. Things are different. And yeah…
…this AI thing feels like another inflection point to me that will make things even differenter 10 years from now.
So those are the kinds of things bubbling around in my head on this subject right now.
And while AI is certainly a threat to what I think we envision when it comes to encouraging civilized discourse among humans online, it’s also an opportunity in terms of giving us more tools to shape the tools we’re creating to enable that.
So as we consider what we want Discourse to become, a lot more seems feasible now than it did a year ago.
Interesting times.