From how to what

Something I've noticed is that as technology begins to mature, the particular internal details become less important. As the technology becomes sufficiently advanced, it becomes completely invisible. At that point, we don't feel like we're interacting with technology. Rather, we're working with its consequences directly. In other words, technology makes the transition from how to what.

Software is still very early on that journey, but there are a few places where that transition has begun. Dropbox is an early example whose success is, I think, fairly misunderstood. Dropbox doesn't succeed because it's simple, but because it's invisible. You just use your files like normal and they appear everywhere. How? Doesn't matter. You only have to think about the what: your files.

On the other hand, the technology for connecting with people is nightmarishly how-centric. The blame for this mostly lies at the feet of the dominant user-capture strategy in social startups, but the number of different ways you can send a message, share a picture, post an update or make a call is completely dumbfounding. The most damning result of this is Android's Share menu, a giant grid of "how" options that comes up before you even get to pick who you want to share with.

I think the first technology to make all of that invisible and let you just focus on the people, rather than how you talk to them, will do very well for itself.