Bloated, and Deformed

Few things are as stupid as the smartphone.
Strip away its role as a display,
and so much of it has become excess that the very identity of being a 'phone' starts to feel hollow.

It's the same with KakaoTalk and Coupang on the software side.
Less of a communication tool, less of a messenger, more like a notification feed.
Less of a social-commerce platform, less of a commerce platform, more like a membership-based online shopping mall.
Right. Thanks - or no thanks - to pivots driven by business needs and market efficiency.

That's right. Aiming not at individual need or meaning but at the economies of scale and at fitting the market, they have grown grotesquely bloated, exactly like the very limitations of the existing services they once targeted in the manifestos written when they first appeared.


It seems hardware and software, not just humans, also grow old in the way people do.