loading . . . Rewilding Digital Gardens # Reflection Point
Last year, I refactored a personal New Years Resolution into a months-long customer discovery exercise.
After only a few conversations, friends and colleagues started to ask questions about my intent:
> “What are you going to do with all this material?
>
> Are you gonna do a TedTalk?
>
> Are you writing a book?
>
> Is this going to be published in an article?
>
> Did you know you have a good voice for a podcast?”
The by-product was a dozen newsletter articles loosely cobbled together as a series of observations, lessons learned, and opinions.
I chose to publish on both Substack and LinkedIn.
I’m proud say that I have more than year’s experience “writing in public.”
Looking back, a lot of my own words come off as very dense and result in a high cognitive load.
> tl;dr my words were _tough_ to read and made people think _too_ hard
As a product practitioner I made an effort to build _____ in public.
It was a lot of hyperfocused intensity.
But, my ideal customer profile wasn’t defined, the range of problem spaces wasn’t articulated.
The mix of context veered between professional opinions and personal philosophy.
Also, the timing wasn’t great.
# Narrative Vibe Shift
Almost all of the thinkpieces were published before the public square of TWTR changed ownership or ChatGPT was a thing.
I’m a believer in the power of conversations.
Conversations between individuals can unlock incredible energy.
> "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
>
> - Margaret Mead
Group discussions is how shit gets done.
After 10 years of Zero Interest Rate Policy, the commodification of user attention, and the socially inept leading product conversations, the internet was not in a good place.
In November 2021, digital marketing strategist Chris Zukowski gave some good advice: “Build your castle on land you own.”
In June 2023, James Vincent of The Verge made a series of observations about the impact of AI on consumer platforms and said that “ _the new web struggles to be born_.”
In October 2023, Om Malik wrote a post, declaring the “ _Social Internet Is Dead. Get Over It._ ”
Two days later, Katie Notopoulos of MIT Technology Review wrote if we wanted to fix the internet, we had to “ _move beyond big platforms._ ”
It made sense.
# De-enshittify 4 All
Between the incentives of the platform owners, the text-consumptive nature of Generative AI, and lack of principled leadership, the commentary was a pointed call to action.
It was time to survey for a plot of digital land, sow seeds of content, and grow a digital garden.
Nobody “builds” a garden.
Because vulnerable, productive, and high-quality conversations are worth it.
> The juice is worth the squeeze.
Principled product people want to build complex adaptive systems, because that is how:
> we learn to safely use all the new machine learning technologies, genetic engineering, and new energy technologies without turning our society into a dystopian Orwellian nightmare.
The next Internet Evolution will be decentralized, open source, and egalitarian.
Culture changes one funeral at a time.
Peer-to-peer conversations are the alchemy for innovation.
My thesis is that product management is broken, or at least deeply fractured.
The talent and worldview of product warped 2010-2022.
The culture, mental models, and best practices of modern software Product Management developed out of VC-backed startups funded and grown during an abnormal ZIRP period of financial history.
Interest rate is a number in DCF models, but cash flow wasn't an objective for a decade, only attention, eyeballs, and growth.
Now product is having an existential moment.
The new buzzwords are “revealed preferences” and “signals-based approach.”
Revealed preferences is another way of saying: “what are people actually spending cash on?”
It’s a recognition that cash is - as always - king.
Noise and “signals” is a concession to the fact that there is a difference between growing programmatically and informing humans to think critically.
Ecosystems that grow for the sake of growth have a name: cancer.
So, what are **your** conversations about? https://www.superversive.co/essays/rewilding-digital-castles-amp-kingdoms
