- Contact Discovery
- Group chats
- History / Log
- Shared message order
- Communication beyond text (emojis / reactions / inline images)
- Ability to receive messages while offline
- No need for technical skills
These aren't trivial features, they are prerequisites for any replacement, decentralized or otherwise. Just because we as developers like / tolerate things like IRC doesn't mean the rest of the world will accept it.
Looking at countries like the Netherlands this is not true. Train stations have rentable bikes which are always available in sufficient quantities.
> So what do we do? Uber-Tesla-Subway pods. I call it by phone, it shows up to my house, either transfers me or lets me dock with the subway and then brings me the last mile just to leave me there for the next thing it has to do.
Individual 'pods' will just never be a sufficiently scalable & ecologically friendly solution for any real city. There's just no way that having several hundred kilos of metal & plastic per individual, along with the space requirements (esp for safety) works.
On the other hand, autonomous & shared 'cars' could replace individual vehicles for hauling / transporting as peak usage would be much lower than for transit.