Substrate

AirPods foster a different approach to detachment: Rather than mute the surrounding world altogether, they visually signal the wearer’s choice to perpetually relegate the immediate environment to the background. ​ AirPods, then, express a more complete embrace of our simultaneous existence in physical and digital space, taking for granted that we’re frequently splitting our mental energy between the two. ​ AirPods have externalities — penalizing non-wearers while confining the value they generate to their individual users. ​ Once everyone has earbuds that are always in, physical proximity will no longer confer a social expectation of shared experience. ​ subordinate our in-person sociality to the privatized infrastructure of networked communication ​ Now, the kind of space that suffices instead is a pleasant backdrop for solitary device usage, a relatively blank slate that doesn’t compete with the phone’s foreground — conditions that places like Sweetgreen and Equinox supply. ​ A dominant aural information platform could have a similar effect, fostering a world where we might as well leave our headphones on because there’s nothing around us worth hearing.

A+ thread IMO private spaces feel more conducive to conversations that get closer to the truth, allowing for misunderstandings & developing ideas. No matter how real you think you are or you try to be, we are all engaging in some kind of performance for a larger crowd on here. The internet is less fun when people move from public to private thinking. Whether due to change of job, status, or competitive landscape, it's noticeable. Have had to do this for certain areas & it feels limiting at times, & mostly leads to less discourse/diversity of thought. The counterpoint is that when you find your braintrust, you can let things fly at a faster pace and with higher variance on quality and reasoned judgment. This leads to *different* discourse but in reality, personally building a diverse braintrust is harder than we like to admit Not to go on an "intellectual dark web"-toned tangent but final point: I sometimes worry that the attractiveness of public thinking that seemed to dominate for past 7-10 years has eroded recently because of 2 core forces that create a cycle of withdrawal or dilution of thought. 1) Widespread hate on social media today across all groups and how it's nearly impossible to make a fringe point without it being hated on. And related, our industry deals with confrontation *horribly*, specifically in the co-opetition world of VC. 2a) A widespread exhaustion & recognition of what is the over-intellectualization of thought & simple content. This leads to a ton of dilution in our feeds filled with abstract tweets, 9 min reads that should be 2, historical allegories for things happening in 2019, & book thread 2 b) Further explained: Many now take simple concepts, abstract them away to much more complex language/narrative as they recognize the arbitrage in doing so due to the value it brings to personal brand (IMO this is 90% of people) 2 c) OR they are so wrapped up in their own rhetoric they think communicating this way is dominant. In this case, I think we can cycle back to the difficulty of building a personal braintrust that is diverse and truly challenging.