I love the optimism, I'd just like to see tech folks clearly delineate "This is what we're doing. This is what it might look like we're doing but we're not." The hype cycle in tech, combined with a tech-illiterate public isn't such a good thing, especially in a democracy. Too often the only way we figure things out is by getting screwed. That's a recurring behavior pattern that has to end. Somehow.

> Too often the only way we figure things out is by getting screwed. That's a recurring behavior pattern that has to end. Somehow.

That's just it - exploration vs exploitation trade-off. Don't believe this can be dusted off.

I think part of the issue might be that there is no "real meaning", we all make it up individually in our heads.

Right. I've spent some time on this during my research for a book about how to manage product/project information, so much of which involves written language.

We create meaning through human interaction. It's a very dynamic and fuzzy experience. We make it out to be a lot more concrete than it actually is. (Part of that is because of the rise of written language, which gives the illusion that if you can point at text on a page that somehow that text represents in an absolute fashion some concept. It does not.) Add programming to the mix, which is almost an entirely mathematical construct, and it's quite easy to get the wrong idea.

This is the kind of thing programmers have blind spots about, and frankly it drives a lot of people crazy. So it's exactly the kind of domain where well-intentioned people can totally fuck things up for large portions of humanity. I'm not really crazy about seeing another social-media-level "oops!" in my lifetime.

This seems like a good place to plug one of my favorite pieces of writing on communication and how it can go wrong: http://jkorpela.fi/wiio.html