I couldn't help but focus on the vicarious adventure aspect Kelly mentions which was the "payment" he offered drivers in exchange for the ride. This is a mechanism that has largely been deprecated by the modern attention economy.
In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction was something like = I provide logistics and you provide content; like the story of your cross-country bike trip.
Today, we have near infinite content in our pockets. The marginal utility of a stranger's story has plummeted because the competition is Joe Rogan or an endless algorithmic feed. We have largely replaced the P2P protocol of kindness with a sort of centralized platform of service. We stripped out the human latency and the requirement for social reciprocity and replaced it with currency and star ratings. It makes me surreal to think about this.
In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction was something like = I provide logistics and you provide content; like the story of your cross-country bike trip.
Today, we have near infinite content in our pockets. The marginal utility of a stranger's story has plummeted because the competition is Joe Rogan or an endless algorithmic feed. We have largely replaced the P2P protocol of kindness with a sort of centralized platform of service. We stripped out the human latency and the requirement for social reciprocity and replaced it with currency and star ratings. It makes me surreal to think about this.