Editor’s Note: This 2018 article still reflects the ideology behind our product. Technology is best utilized when it works by itself and out of your way. Invisible technology allows you to be a human doing creative and meaningful work instead of an operator.
Friday, 13 October 2017
Technology is best when invisible.
What are invisible technologies?
The technology industry has forgotten that truth proclaimed by Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things.” That which is ancient is most futuristic: the most futuristic technologies realize the ancient potential of man. If “man is the measure of all things”, then man is the measure of technology—and against that measure, most so-called “technologies” fail.
Most technologies are not technological, because they fail to improve the human condition. Increasingly it feels that humans serve technology, rather technology serving humans. Our lives revolve around technologies, instead of technologies revolving around our lives.
This is best visualized by our logo. Suppose that your life is a circle. Every technology in your life is like a square. Your house, your car, your laptop, your phone — every app on your phone, every vendor you use — these are all squares filling your circle. Which leads us to the question:
How many squares does it take to fill a circle? Which, in this metaphor, is the same as asking: How many technologies does it take to completely satisfy the demands of your life?
The answer is: an infinite amount. The first few squares will be very large, solve major problems, and cover a large amount of your life. But squares will get smaller, and solve less important problems.
That is why, in our hyper-specialized economy, the biggest problem in the world is solutions. There’s an app for everything, a vendor for everything — so why isn’t everything perfect yet?
The answer is that solutions have costs. As users, we have to find, integrate and use all of these technologies.
The paradox that the technology industry fails to acknowledge is that despite making more and more “technology”, gains from increasing specialization diminish. Without solving for coordination costs, there is a limit to how much technology a human can actually use.
But we don’t want to be users anymore, we want to be humans again! As long as technology requires users, it will be fundamentally limited by them. There will be a ceiling to utility. A single user can only use so many solutions.
As long as we have to use technology, we will never fill our square with circles. There will always be gaps, holes and unfilled spaces. Technology will never completely satisfy us; we will remain in a permanent state of frustration.
Technology is at its best when it is invisible.
What is an invisible technology? Invisible technologies don’t require you to use them. They work in the background. They use technology for you.
Although there is tremendous competition to build visible technologies, there is almost no competition to build invisible technologies.
Invisible technologies are the layer on top of existing technologies. They solve for hidden costs: transaction costs, coordination costs, security costs, switching costs, operations costs, delegation costs — and other Coasian factors.
Although these costs are hidden, they are not small. They are the ignored, but decisive, phenomena that explain the shape of our economy.
There are fundamental reasons why there is no competition to build invisible technologies:
- Invisible. Obviously, invisible technology is hard to demo. The less visible your technology is, the harder it is to explain its value.
- Dependent. Nobody wants to build on top of another platform, because that means less control. If the platform changes, you have to change. The limits of an API define the scope of your software.
- Horizontal. Existing technologies are all vertical: they solve one problem. Invisible technologies are horizontal: they solve problems between existing technologies. This is far more ambitious, complex and risky.
- Synthetic. Existing technologies are pure software. There are no humans involved. But because of the limits of software, and the limits of users, software alone will never fully satisfy us. So to deliver true technology, something magical that actually improves human life: invisible technologies are synthetic. This means lower margins, higher business complexity, and more scaling challenges.
Viewed another way, all of these disadvantages become advantages. Not only are they barriers to entry, they reveal enormous, wide-open opportunities. It feels as if we have discovered a new dimension.
Invisible technologies complete the circle of your life.
