Balaji: Digital networks decoupled geographic proximity from cultural proximity
Balaji Srinivasan · Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Communities & Crypto | MFM #178 · May 5, 2021 · at 1:24:30
Balaji Srinivasan discusses how internet connectivity and social media have decoupled physical proximity from social alignment in modern cities.
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“So if somebody lives in a city, in an apartment building, they often don't know their next door neighbors, may not even recognize the person who's living 50 feet away from them, right? Literally this person is living, eating, sleeping there, but you walk down this hallway, it's all Closed doors, right? It's basically as if you lived in a data center, you know, like with virtual machines, you know, like you cut up a server into a bunch of virtual machines that are all siloed and compartmentalized and isolated from each other, right? So you go and you live in this box. You don't know who's next door. You don't know who's above you. You don't know who's below. You don't know who's left or the right of you. Don't recognize the people in the hallway, but who do you recognize? You recognize a person from 3000 miles away who you're laughing with on Snapchat or You know, like video chat or anything like that. You recognize that guy on the other side of the world who you're arguing with, you know, your social network, your friends and your enemies or whatever, you know, your friends and your frenemies, like they're just scattered around the world.”
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