{"id":26734,"date":"2022-12-30T18:31:17","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T18:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/30\/new-years-message-the-opportunity-to-build-a-better-internet-is-here-right-now\/"},"modified":"2022-12-30T18:31:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T18:31:17","slug":"new-years-message-the-opportunity-to-build-a-better-internet-is-here-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/30\/new-years-message-the-opportunity-to-build-a-better-internet-is-here-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year\u2019s Message: The Opportunity To Build A Better Internet Is Here. Right Now."},"content":{"rendered":"

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from the the-best-of-times<\/i> dept<\/h3>\n

Long term readers of Techdirt know that, since 2008, I\u2019ve written a final post of the year on reasons to remain optimistic. It started when some people kept telling me that when they read what I wrote I sounded angry and frustrated, but when they\u2019d meet me in person, I always seemed optimistic about the prospects for the world. As I\u2019ve noted, I don\u2019t see this as a contradiction at all. I remain incredibly optimistic about the potential for innovation, and generally frustrated and angry at whatever is getting in the way of making that optimistic vision a reality.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to read past year\u2019s New Year\u2019s messages here they all are:<\/p>\n

For large parts of this year, I actually wondered if there was really that much to be optimistic about in tech, but over the last few months I have to admit that I\u2019ve been the most optimistic I\u2019ve been in a long time. I previewed just some of my thinking just about a week ago when I noted that I can\u2019t see any reason<\/a> for anyone to invest time in building up a social graph on yet another centralized<\/em> social media network, now that we\u2019re seeing how a decentralized one can actually work, and work well.<\/p>\n

When I posted that, someone on Mastodon joked that they had no idea that I was a secret optimist, but again, that\u2019s the spirit of these posts.<\/p>\n

And now is a fantastic<\/em> time to be an optimist about tech innovation, even as it sometimes feels like the world is falling down around us, and there are tons of terrible regulations being proposed (and sometimes, tragically, being turned into law). Also, some will argue that with inflation high, an apparent economic recession, and much of the tech industry contracting, it\u2019s one of those nuclear winter scenarios.<\/p>\n

But, I disagree. Yes, all of those things are bad, and it\u2019s having a real impact on many people\u2019s lives. But having lived through multiple tech \u201ccrashes,\u201d I\u2019ve learned how this is the time when things tend to get more interesting. The most interesting innovations almost always come out of the \u201cdark\u201d times in tech. Sometimes it\u2019s because<\/em> of those dark times, whether it\u2019s because more tech folks have extra time on their hands, or because an industry (or wider economic) recession just clarifies new opportunities.<\/p>\n

Over the last five or six years or so, people kept insisting that the big internet companies were too big and too powerful to ever fail or get disrupted. I kept pointing out that people have said that over and over in the past with regards to tech and they were always wrong. Yet, \u201cthis time is different\u201d was the refrain I\u2019ve heard over and over and over again. And\u2026 while the big companies are still big, none of them look invincible at all any more.<\/p>\n

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These giants are not quite so invincible any more.<\/p>\n

This is crazy exciting. I know that Techdirt haters keep (falsely) claiming that we\u2019re \u201cbig tech shills\u201d or whatever, but watching the natural order of things take down these giants and open up new paths to innovation is one of the most thrilling developments for innovation in recent years. I don\u2019t think any of those companies will disappear, of course, but having them fade into the background and allowing some new entrants to lead the innovation train for a while is a compelling thought (just as happened with previously dominant firms like Microsoft and IBM).<\/p>\n

We\u2019re seeing opportunities abound. I already talked about the rise of Mastodon and the opportunities for pushing power away from internet giants and out towards the users. That remains one of the most exciting things to happen in the last year, especially since people had predicted it for years<\/a> with little to show for it. Until now. The innovation currently happening on Mastodon is fun to see, especially as Facebook and Twitter seem to be flailing in spectacular ways.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just in social media.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, we kept being told that \u201cbig tech\u201d companies had an impossible-to-close lead in artificial intelligence. We were told<\/a> that only Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft could possibly \u201clead\u201d in AI, because they had access to the best talent, and the most data, and no one else could possibly catch up. We were told over and over again<\/a> that antitrust had to look at these big companies<\/a> and how they were going to control the AI world.<\/p>\n

And yet, by far the most interesting AI developments this past year came\u2026 not from any of those companies, but from OpenAI, a for-profit entity that is owned by and started as a non-profit. Earlier this year it unleashed DALL-E 2 on the world, showing just how powerful and creative one could be with AI generated art. And almost immediately we saw a bunch of similar offerings (many building on OpenAI\u2019s initial work) popping up, such as MidJourney, and the open source Stable Diffusion. And while Google and Meta have previewed their own versions of this technology, both are playing from (way) behind, rather than leading the way. <\/p>\n

Just as the year was coming to a close, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT got the world excited about advances in generative text as well, to the point that some are even talking about how ChatGPT could actually eventually challenge Google\u2019s core search business<\/a>. It\u2019s way too early for that, and ChatGPT is nowhere near in a position to make a dent in Google\u2019s search business\u2026 but, there\u2019s an opening. An opening that just a year ago many people insisted was impossible.<\/p>\n

There have been some other fun surprises in the hardware world as well. While it launched in 2021, 2022 is when the Framework laptop seems to have really started to take off, showing that a brand new laptop company can enter what had felt like a mostly closed market with an innovative take that is focused on (yet again) putting more power in the hands of the end users: shipping a laptop that not only is designed to be modified by the owner, but where the user is specifically encouraged to repair and modify their own laptops. In an age where the big companies are still fighting a right to repair, we\u2019re seeing smaller companies step in and see the right to repair as a market opportunity<\/em> to come in and beat the big guys. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, another thing that some people think bodes poorly for tech may be just the opposite: the collapse of cryptocurrencies capped off with the complete disintegration of FTX showing that it appeared to just be three different frauds stacked upon each other in trench coat pretending to be an actual financial firm\u2026 is great news. I have strongly mixed feelings about much of the cryptocurrency space, because I do think there actually are some potentially useful opportunities in (once again) moving some level of power out from giant central players (banks in this case) towards a more decentralized world that empowers those who used to be kept out of the system. <\/p>\n

And there have been kernels<\/em> of interesting ideas built into some of the innovations around smart contracts and decentralized finance. But\u2026 almost all of that has been completely buried in frauds, scams, and get rich quick ponzi schemes. So I think it\u2019s also great news for most of that to be destroyed, and for most people to turn their attention elsewhere, to see how people who aren\u2019t in it for the monetary aspect can make some useful things with the technology. Or, maybe they won\u2019t do that at all. But we have a better chance of finding out if the scams and nonsense are cleared away and everyone thinks it\u2019s dead and buried.<\/p>\n

In short, all of the stuff that lots of people seem to think is really \u201cbad\u201d for tech is really only bad for the old way that things were done, which had very real problems. And that means we have a huge opportunity to rebuild things in a better way. Like we\u2019re seeing with Mastodon and more decentralized social media, and which we might see with new innovations in AI and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Things may be bad for \u201cbig tech,\u201d but that\u2019s the perfect time for us to fix all that went wrong over the past decade. So it\u2019s time to be optimistic again. It\u2019s time to innovate and to focus on doing things better this time around. <\/p>\n

Last year, I talked about the idea of an Eternal October<\/a>, and\u2026 at that point it was wishful thinking. Now, I can actually see the path to it coming true, and that\u2019s incredibly exciting.<\/p>\n

Separately, this has been a wild year for Techdirt and the Copia Institute. Copia launched our first browser based game, called Startup Trail<\/a>, to go along with many other game related projects<\/a> we\u2019ve been doing (and there are so, so many more in progress that we look forward to sharing soon). We\u2019ve also been astoundingly busy on about half a dozen different papers and reports, many of which should be coming out soon.<\/p>\n

On the Techdirt side, we\u2019ve had some huge stories that received tons of attention. We were the only ones really covering some terrible legislation<\/a> in California. We\u2019ve done some important debunker stories<\/a>, and I\u2019ll pat myself on the back and say we\u2019ve had the most thorough and comprehensive coverage of everything that Elon Musk is fucking up<\/a> at Twitter over the course of a crazy, crazy year.<\/p>\n

We also went through the somewhat Herculean task of moving 25 years of legacy Techdirt over to an entirely new platform<\/a>. That wasn\u2019t without some hiccups, but given how much went into it, the move was relatively smooth (though we\u2019re still finding and squashing some bugs many months later), and are looking forward to doing more now that we\u2019re on a more extensible platform. Oh yeah, we also celebrated our 25th anniversary<\/a> and had a really fun event for Techdirt Insiders. We\u2019re planning to do more of those, so I\u2019ll put in one final pitch to consider becoming an Insider<\/a>, joining the Discord and participating in future events. Or there are lots of other ways<\/a> to support us.<\/p>\n

As always, my final paragraph of these posts is thanking all of you, the community around Techdirt, for making all of this worthwhile. The community around Techdirt remains an amazing thing to me. I\u2019ve said in the past that I write as if I\u2019m going to share my thoughts into an empty void, not expecting anyone to ever pay attention, and I\u2019m always amazed when anyone does pay attention, whether it\u2019s to disagree with me, add some additional insights, challenge my thinking, or even reach out to talk about how to actually move some ideas forward. So, once again, thank you<\/em>, who are reading this for making Techdirt such a wonderful and special place over these past 25 years, and as we push forward into this wide open world of new opportunities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nFiled Under: new year’s<\/a>, new year’s message<\/a>, optimism<\/a>
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