Interesting indeed.
Fun departure point for thinking about other similarities and differences between the two. On the similarity side they are both about information - all human emotions (all life, really:-) are exchanges of information, it’s just that the emotional is best encoded/decoded by people and is rarely sought out explicitly but in high demand implicitly (we don’t search for “happiness” and “friendship”, but we definitely search for happiness and friendship). I’d call it “explicit” vs. “implicit”.
They are both infinite in the sense that they deal with dynamic, growing entities. One could argue that F is more about flow of “new” information vs. G is more about locating existing information, but in both worlds the value (social or economic) of information decays exponentially with time.
The are both culturally challenging and both were more disruptive culturally than they were technically. The technical innovation was in both cases a fairly natural consequence of the cultural idea (the “big what” was cultural, not technical). G’s biggest contribution was simplicity and business model. In both cases the technology (“how”) needed to support the cultural “what” quickly became a technological competitive barrier. Both stumbled into spaces where single, uniform solutions are probably socially advantageous (G is “infrastructure” and F is “public architecture”). That means that both are destined for significant levels of public scrutiny and ultimately regulation and possible fragmentation. G is obviously already there, F is a few more privacy blow-ups away from it.
The are both culturally challenging and both were more disruptive culturally than they were technically. The technical innovation was in both cases a fairly natural consequence of the cultural idea (the “big what” was cultural, not technical). G’s biggest contribution was simplicity and business model. In both cases the technology (“how”) needed to support the cultural “what” quickly became a technological competitive barrier. Both stumbled into spaces where single, uniform solutions are probably socially advantageous (G is “infrastructure” and F is “public architecture”). That means that both are destined for significant levels of public scrutiny and ultimately regulation and possible fragmentation. G is obviously already there, F is a few more privacy blow-ups away from it.
