22. In the future, you get to be your own messenger

But mainly you'll be stuck on social media. Unless...

The means of communication have dramatically changed.

When you want to have a conversation with someone not physically present…

• In the year 980: You send a messenger.

• In 1820: You write a letter.

• In 1920: Letter, telegraph, or maybe telephone.

• In 1980: You give them a call on the phone. To do this, you dial their number, which you either know because they gave it to you or find it listed in a public directory.

• 2010: Text message or email. Maybe Skype.

• 2024: Google Meet. Telegram. Apple Messages. WhatsApp.

• 2050: ?

I have no experience sending a messenger. "Hey you! Ride to Paris with this covert missive. Depart at once!"

I don't write letters anymore. It's mostly short texts.

We’re blessed with greater connectivity. We’re cursed with less depth.

And somehow, corporations have found a place in our most intimate conversations. Rather than using a pen and paper, which is neutral, I have squillion-dollar tech conglomerates listening in on my conversations to find ways to generate revenue from my interests by serving me targeted ads.

How do we feel about this?

What kind of future are we texting ourselves into?

Here’s a futuristic sci-fi scenario: It’s 2150. Much of humanity lives on space stations. We live in an immersive gamified augmented reality governed by artificial superintelligence (incidentally, a key aspect of my forthcoming science fiction novel).

I'm orbiting beyond the asteroid belt, and you're near Earth. My message will take some time to reach you. Light speed unbroken, I cannot expect instant connectivity.

So I'm sending a messenger — myself in VR form. You get a virtualized representation of me that communicates with you. You can even interact with it.

What a strange new set of psychological issues this will bring up about the nature of authentic human connection.

All this sounds insane, maybe, and that's fine.

In fact, that's my point. Let's not take any technological development as if it makes sense or is somehow pre-determined. The insane sci-fi VR messenger scenario is actually very possible for 2150. We’ll get there by continuing to iterate and release new things whether or not we understand what motivates us to do so.

No one is behind the wheel

Twenty years ago, when you came to the bottom of a web page, you had to click a button to load more stuff. Now, we have infinite scrolling. How handy. Except, no one really intended it to be what it became. A guy found a way to make things auto-load when you got close to the bottom. Doomscrolling was born. But not because we consciously chose it.

When I send you a text message, I’ll get a handy check mark to confirm when you read it. If you like my post on social media, the whole world can see a counter incremented by one. We have myriad ways of measuring engagement. Except…

Metrics can’t measure what matters most

The Rolling Stones well understand that they’re widely beloved, but if I put on Let it Bleed or whatever, they’re not going to have any idea, no matter how much it might move me in the moment.

For whatever reason, this point has always fascinated me. An artist can create something and it might impact the hearts and minds of billions, but that fact doesn’t really have anything to do with the act of creation or the value of it.

Yet I still have the delusion somewhere that once a person gets big enough, surely maybe this changes? I think this is a shared societal delusion. I think it’s why 1 in 4 Gen Z-ers plan to become social media influencers.

Despite all the meditation and yoga and self-inquiry, I somehow still believe that the desire to create something beautiful from an inspired place can be externally validated.

Obviously, I hope that my writing makes some connection with you, reader. I hope you enjoy Pants in the Tree as much as I did when I wrote it. I hope my forthcoming sci-fi is a big hit. And if you leave a positive review or tell all your friends, I would be so grateful. But I also might not ever know.

It’s kind of like the little check mark I get when you read my text message. It represents a value in some database that got toggled from `false` to `true`.

Metrics definitely measure something. It means something to gain 10000 followers. But really, the thing that matters is whether I am inspired—and whether I’m having an impact on people.

All these tech services are innovating around better ways of gathering user data. When browsing on Kindle or Medium, the app will tell you which parts of a book or article are commonly highlighted. Hey, you! Other people thought this sentence was important!

It doesn't matter who they are or who you are. What matters is that you are a unique user. In the eyes of the algorithm, we have the power to toggle. Wow, what an incredible birthright.

Although metrics can be useful, they miss the point. I get happy when I see I’ve made a sale or someone liked something I put myself into. But I am also prone to get discouraged when my metrics don’t track with my expectations for what is “good.”

All this tech can be very effective at practical things like keeping a grocery store stocked with cans of soup, but things get weird when we as a society start to rely on online sorting mechanisms to point to whether life is worth living.

The world needs more creators and less influencers

Many people who would make really brilliant creators are held back because they conflate “creator” with “influencer.” They don’t engage because they don’t want to touch the world of social media with a ten-foot pole.

Being a creator is about being platform-independent. And in my mind, a creator fundamentally differs from an influencer because a creator is not in it for metrics. They’re focused on empowering themselves and dedicating themselves to what is most important in life.

To do that, you live according to your values, produce something beautiful or of value, and engage others.

As a result, some sort of community might form—not around the creator's personality, but around the content that gets created.

Influencers are trying to sell the image of a lifestyle.

Growth gurus are leveraging persuasive psychology to sell the value of selling. They’re in it for audience growth and money.

I’d argue that creators aren’t trying to sell you at all. They probably have stuff for sale (or a way of accepting payment), but the main goal is about doing the work.

My sense of the creator is fundamentally as an artist, a visionary, a storyteller.

When you communicate from an inspired place, you benefit because you are engaged with what inspires you. And others benefit, and a circular economy is born.