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What do we want
to automate?

There’s a nice anecdote the late great Kurt Vonnegut tells about how we spend our time. He describes how, rather than ordering envelopes in bulk online, he’d prefer to go out and buy one himself:

I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And see some great-looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know.

The moral of the story is –
we’re here on Earth to fart around.

Of course, the computers will do us out of that. But what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

Kurt Vonnegut smiling

Kurt Vonnegut, 1999. Portrait by Mpozi Mshale Tolbert Staff

He’s right — computers (and computer people) have gotten awfully good at taking the farting around out of life. Especially lately. What do we want to automate in our daily lives? And what friction is worth keeping, in the interest of staying connected to reality?

We can subscribe to pre-made meals and automatic product deliveries. Delegate our inbox and phone calls to an AI assistant. Watch the top ten picks on Netflix. Listen to Spotify DJ’s endless stream of algorithmically selected tracks.

Now we can even generate an email or an essay or a LinkedIn post in an instant. But who wants to read something we can’t be bothered to write?

Everything is convenient, but everything is boring, and everything is the same.

People are what make life interesting. We get the most out of people making choices, building community, trying new things, sharing their perspective, and generally bumping along and figuring things out together.

This is why we built Supergroup.

Supergroup gives every group chat a lively little world of its own. Everything you talk about, share, and do becomes a living collection of your life together. It brings the superpowers of the internet and AI to your group chat, but keeps people at the center. We don’t want to automate our lives away, just make a little more room for living them.

We’re still in the early days of figuring out what we can do with all this new technology. And we are computer people because we believe technology can still be magical and fun. We are directing our energy toward ideas that enable and enrich human connection, rather than replacing it.

Whatever you’re into
gets better in Supergroup.

Life is full of magic.

Technology should help us find more of it together.

We hope you’ll come fart around with us.

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