Modern culture assumes that you are a stranger
StJohn Piano
3 October 2026
Post #160
http://tela.network/forum/160/

Cultural assumption in modernity:
- Each interaction is standalone by default.
-- This is the "normal" / "default" case.
--- Example: Calendly meeting
---- We assume two strangers meet.
---- In the case where the two people know each other well, we don't treat this as a different case mechanically. The software is the same.

- This is quite strange, historically speaking.

- The way human activity actually works is that most transactions flow through established relationships. Including talking to each other, a drink, a meal, a business opportunity, a job, a project. This is 90%, or even 95-98%, of all human socially-mediated activity (as opposed to individual).
-- Therefore, ideally, a social software system should be weighted towards supporting the happy path(s), instead of assuming the strangers-meet path and supporting that over other paths.
-- Tela: A public log is a piece of shared social reality / facts, on which items arrive by consensus. So there must be a consensus protocol.