automation transforming bell curve to power law, hollowing out of middle class as only a minority can leverage their labor to extreme degree
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cosmopolitan egalitarianism for the productive elite, nationalism and demagoguery for the masses
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fwiw I consider this a Bad Outcome but it is one of the least bad ones I have been able to come up with that is mid-term realistic
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which corporation will be the first to issue passports
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rushkoff argued programming was the new literacy, and he was right, but the specifics of his argument get lost in the retelling
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the way he saw it, this was the start of the third epoch, the preceding two ushered in by 1) the invention of writing, 2) the printing press
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writing broke communal oral tradition and replaced it with record-keeping and authoritative narration by the literate minority to the masses
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only the few could produce texts, and the many depended on them to recite and interpret. this the frame (pre-V2 maybe) catholicism inhabits
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the printing press led to mass literacy. this is the frame of protestantism, the idea it is for each man to read and interpret for himself
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but after a brief spate of widely-accessable press (remember paine's common sense? very dangerous!) access tightened up
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hence mass media as gatekeeper, arbiter of consensus reality. the few report, and the many receive
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not that journalists were ever the elite, just as the egyptian scribes. they were the priestly class, weber's "new middle"
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(also lawyers. remember the backwoods lawyer? used to be all you needed was the books and a good head. before credentialism ate the field)
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the internet killed consensus reality. now anyone can trivially disseminate arbitrary text
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but the platforms on which those texts are seen are controlled by the new priests, line programmers, which determine how information flows
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this is what critics of "the facebook algorithm" et al are groping at. the many can create, the few craft the landscape that hosts creation
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it's still early, remains to be seen if we can keep relatively open platforms (like twitter circa 2010; open in the unimpeded sense)
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or if the space narrows, new gatekeepers secure hold. but that will be determined by programmers. (maybe lawmakers). rest along for the ride
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i read that as 'cyberdrunk' and i was like yeah, that seems accurate.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@Slate arcologies in San Fran will be a nice upsideThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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