Quando Maciej Cegłowski (il fondatore di Pinboard) tiene un talk, io ascolto sempre con attenzione. L’ultimo l’ha chiamato “Web Design — The First 100 Years“, e parte dagli aeroplani per arrivare al web parlando di crescita esponenziale, e del web verso cui la Silicon Valley spinge, mai adeguato al presente (che è qualcosa di noioso!), irreale e centralizzato:

The two things you need to know about exponential growth: it lets you get to large numbers very quickly. And it always runs into physical barriers. […] The world of the near future is one of power constrained devices in a bandwidth-constrained environment. It’s very different from the recent past, where hardware performance went up like clockwork, with more storage and faster CPUs every year.

Bellissimo anche questo passaggio, sul web così come l’avevamo concepito: per connettere persone e idee:

The other part of our exponential hangover is how we build our businesses. The cult of growth denies the idea that you can build anything useful or helpful unless you’re prepared to bring it to so-called “Internet scale”. There’s no point in opening a lemonade stand unless you’re prepared to take on PepsiCo.

I always thought that things should go the other way. Once you remove the barriers of distance, there’s room for all sorts of crazy niche products to find a little market online. People can eke out a living that would not be possible in the physical world. Venture capital has its place, as a useful way to fund long-shot projects, but not everything fits in that mold.

The cult of growth has led us to a sterile, centralized web. And having burned through all the easy ideas within our industry, we’re convinced that it’s our manifest destiny to start disrupting everyone else.