A Technological Reverie

What the hell was TwitterPeek?

The year 2012 was the beginning of the era of smartphone dominance. Sales of Androids, iPhones, and other web-enabled mobile devices grew 44% from 2011 to 2012, capturing 45.5% of the entire cellphone sales market. Meanwhile, non-smartphone sales stagnated and their sales were surpassed by smartphones once and for all the following year. By the end of 2012, it was reasonable to expect people in heavily industrialized countries to have the entire internet literally at their fingertips.

People far smarter than I am can debate which was the cause and which was the effect, but I pick 2012 as the dividing year between the growth and arrival of the internet because it was also the year social media use in the United States became the default rather than the exception. By February 2012, more than half of adults in the US reported using at least one social media site. The internet wasn’t just becoming commonplace, it was standardizing and growing safer — and more corporate.

The drastic reducti…