Thoughts on how to build an aspirational social media experience

I work these days in tertiary education - running and enhancing the IT systems, rather than directly teaching students, but I do guest lecture from time to time. I have spent the bulk of my career so far in commercial environments, and I moved to the education sector a few years ago, as I felt that I should begin using my powers for 'good' for a change.

As a large part of my job, I need to think about the social and collaborative experiences we provide or encourage in our students. It seems to me that most of the available platforms (almost certainly on purpose) tend to drive a tightening spiral of experience, reinforcing the echo chamber effect, while growing the number of connections. The content finds the lowest common denominator and hijacks the naturally competitive nature of people to a narrow and shallow focus on chasing easily attainable goals.

Suppose there could be a platform that broadens the aspirations of the platform members and encourages longer-term participation in complex endeavours rather than click-bait.

I must admit that I was also inspired to think about this by a common graphic currently doing the rounds on the aforementioned social media sites - the 'your life in weeks' visualisations. I'm old enough now to be aware that there is less life ahead than behind, so how do I make sure I use my time well. How do I prioritise things that will only get harder in the coming decades?