Right - and before that it was direct-dial bbs’s, (not to mention how email got sent in non-realtime batch deliveries, possibly a reference to how something like this could work). What I’m imagining here is more like an RSS feed, where there is some standardized container - akin to the facebook frame, and it gets fed with the latest content from your pool of contacts.
Lots of ways it could be shaped. So many lessons to be learned from the what worked about FB et al, (ubiquitous, low technical barrier, rich content/multi-media support, (people love their cat vids)). Most of the would-be rival systems, Ello, Diaspora and the bunch - are still either oriented toward some type of monetization, or they require hosting on a central server. Or they’re so geekily specific in their function that most people won’t find them useful. Civilizations communication structure is too important to be inside of any kind of economic feedback loop - if so it will always be distorted toward some parties angle.
Brings to mind a sentiment expressed by Carver Mead (who created VLSI that made all this stuff possible) - paraphrasing ‘you never invent the next tech with the current tech, you use the previous generation to create the next generation of technology’.
