I recently attended an event hosted by Yash and Suneela called 'International Generalist Day'. It is a completely volunteer-driven initiative that happens globally at the exact same time every year, along with occasional popup events every few months. One of the activities was called 'World Cafe', where you move around tables to collate and ideate. The topic given was something like, 'What might we do to make travel instant and effortless in Bengaluru?'

My team was fun. We were ideating with strangers around all the impossible notions like holograms, wormholes, teleportation, skateboarding, and even flying cars. I was one of the doodlers. There were also few semi-practical suggestions like building infrastructure to have 'micro bullet trains' that connect high-rise buildings. Few also suggested that we ask more 'Lift', or carpooling.

That got me into a rabbit hole of similar conversations I had with my friend Priya and Cousin. At some point, we became okay with paying for any kind of service. Catching a lift was fine, it is still in few towns and villages, but in cities it is no longer an option. No denying that most of us are strangers, but the act of trust is gone and we tend to isolate. Any effort in the form of service right now is proportional to cost. Majority post on social media, no longer behind the intention to share but to chase views, likes and shares. We use reachability as a metric to gauge growth, with the ultimate goal of earning more from it. The sheer effort that goes into making a video must be returned in some form. Thats platform capitalism?

I remember growing up in a world when the internet was just emerging and happened to have a conversation with my cousin on how IP routing works and what BGP is. We have this massive system used worldwide where traffic routes can be published by almost anyone using a simple protocol. In the early days, it was not even heavily guarded until high-profile routing leaks and hijacks by China forced everyone to add some form of checks and reliability (It is an interesting story). From there, or even before that, we have managed to turn almost everything required for basic coexistence into a transactional service. It forces you to look back at how we used to handle ordinary daily needs, like splitting a commute or just asking around for a lift.

The damage is done, and now it cannot be reversed. It will only keep expanding. Any basic act of humanity is praised and labeled as a service, even though having empathy is the absolute bare minimum expected out of a human. If every interaction requires a transaction code, we slowly erode our capacity for collective trust.

It looks like convenience on paper. But what we are actually doing is replacing the normal, everyday interactions we used to have with each other with clean, predictable apps. Instead of asking your neighbour to watch your daughter or a pet, you book a service to get it done. We are essentially paying to build walls between ourselves and the people around us.