Substack and The Internet of Things

Substack released a new feature that allows writers to customize their Substack page using an HTML/CSS editor, so that their custom design shows up in the Substack app.

It’s feature chum. It’s just another way to keep us tethered to the Substack platform; to “the cloud.”

The Internet-of-things (IoT) marked the first crack in my rose-colored glasses in which I viewed big California tech companies. It was the first time I was like, wait a minute. This isn’t about giving us something useful. It’s about something else (I have that same feeling about AI).

The internet-of-things and Substack’s new feature (and AI and blockchain, and crypto, and–) are related in that they are catalysts for big tech’s cloud strategy. It’s spaghetti thrown at the wall. Some of the pasta stuck, some slid down to a heaping pile of dead hype.

The sync-and-share business model was pioneered by Dropbox and went mainstream with iCloud. I pay them to keep my MacBook, iPhone and iPad synced and up-to-date. They ensure I don’t lose my files.

It’s a good service. I use it to swap writing on my phone to my laptop to my phone again. What a time to be alive.

But, of course, it wasn’t enough for big tech. My little ten or so bucks per month isn’t buying anyone a second yacht.

A decade ago, sync-and-share revealed what is now the end game for technocrats— 1. Build and enforce that tether from device to data center by any means possible. 2. Get us addicted to remote computational power 3. Dial up the egress fees to 11. Then, voilà. We got the Comcast(s) of compute.

We’re still hovering around step 2. Flirting with 3.

Reduce the things you do that strengthens that tether.