I've lived through a few eras, where open and/or decentralized systems were expected to win (Internet, crypto today). For most users, the critical things are usability and utility, not decentralization.
If we care about decentralization, we have to care about these points even more, to make products competitive with what users are used to. Even though many engs I know value decentralization, most people won't choose systems for this reason alone.
Just like with Github, there was a bunch of anger before when Slack was displacing IRC. I wrote some thoughts about what we/I could learn from that example:
If you really want to get more cynical, Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch" is a masterful look at 20th century technologies (radio, telephone, telegraph) going through the idealism of the early days, to the inevitable frustration when it creates new anti-consumer behemoths.
Indeed, indeed. It's a tough issue and I do sometimes slip into cynicism about it. At the very least, I hope by being aware of it we can mitigate the worst outcomes, even if we ultimately always see some degree of re-centralization.
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I've lived through a few eras, where open and/or decentralized systems were expected to win (Internet, crypto today). For most users, the critical things are usability and utility, not decentralization.
If we care about decentralization, we have to care about these points even more, to make products competitive with what users are used to. Even though many engs I know value decentralization, most people won't choose systems for this reason alone.
Just like with Github, there was a bunch of anger before when Slack was displacing IRC. I wrote some thoughts about what we/I could learn from that example:
What Open Source Can Learn From Slack
https://www.nemil.com/musings/oss-and-slack.html
If you really want to get more cynical, Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch" is a masterful look at 20th century technologies (radio, telephone, telegraph) going through the idealism of the early days, to the inevitable frustration when it creates new anti-consumer behemoths.
Indeed, indeed. It's a tough issue and I do sometimes slip into cynicism about it. At the very least, I hope by being aware of it we can mitigate the worst outcomes, even if we ultimately always see some degree of re-centralization.