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I’ve been following Jack Dorsey’s career since his days at the helm of Twitter. After building the social network that redefined public discourse he walked away, in search of more decentralized forms of communication, in line with his beliefs about freedom in the digital environment.
His latest brainchild, Bitchat, illustrates the lengths he is prepared to go in pursuit of his ideas. An instant messaging app that does not require an internet connection, servers or user accounts, a phone number, email address or any personal information, instead, it works simply with a bluetooth-enable phone. The goal is to show that it’s possible to chat and even transfer bitcoins without relying on mobile networks or servers, using only the modest Bluetooth radio that we all carry in our pockets. And it works, at least to a certain extent.
The app was launched on July 10 as a limited beta and sold out its 10,000 TestFlight slots in a matter of hours. Now, it’s available in the App Store, and offers a somewhat spartan experience: you open the app and, if there’s someone nearby who also has it, you’re already in the channel, an almost romantic return to the IRC era, but without any common infrastructure. And it is precisely this precariousness that makes Bitchat a useful tool for festivals, excursions, or natural disasters…