by Peter Wang
An extended reflection on how the web failed as a medium for human connection — and what the builders of social software should do about it. The work is organized as two volumes with two different jobs:
What happened, as seen from inside. Written in 2017–2018, years before the recent wave of public concern about social media, and preserved here as a historical document. It argues that centralized social media is harmful by construction — not by moderation failure — and traces the structural record: the attention economy as servant of growth capitalism, the conversion of connection into consumption, the root protocol and topology failures of the internet itself.
Volume I is deliberately not updated or modernized. Its datedness is evidence: this was legible in 2017. It was lightly tidied in 2026 (typos, unfinished stubs, and a condensed appendix of the era's reference lists), with substance and voice unchanged.
Volume II — briefs for future builders (in progress; title TBD)
What to build. New writing, addressed to senior builders of social and community software: the axioms of human attention, relationship, and identity that any humane communications system must respect; the design commitments that follow from them; concrete patterns and anti-patterns; the question of what a product organization should measure instead of engagement; and principles for the oncoming era of AI — humane machine co-cogitators in humanity's sense-making sphere.
All contents are copyright 2017–2026 by Peter Wang, and licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA.