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“Software eats world” is a good example since it was a powerful grand narrative for 2000-15. In part because it accommodated the emotional and moral valence ranges of world events. But it feels mismatched to post 2016. It’s now just a subplot with limited explanatory power.
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Plausible for a certain messed-up personality type, but I think humans who’ve once had their consciousness expanded by a global perspective can never be truly “local” ever again. Tbf I think there’s something wrong with frogs who climb back into wells after learning about ocean.
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Replying to @vgr
I suspect this is part of the drive towards local/YIMBY style organizing. Much easier to care about your neighborhood than what goes on in DC.
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This is an unresolved problem with “city state” futures. Historically, city-state eras (Italy, hanseatic league) still had coherent global sensibilities. They weren’t frogs in wells trying to run culture larps in bubbkes.
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This is a good example for this thread. It is a good insight. 10 years ago, you could have spun a 4000 word feature out of this that would have gone viral, because it would have made meaning out of the ML moment. Now it just sits there.
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Replying to @vgr
The next iteration of "bicycle for the mind", decoupling artistic skill from artistic expression and unlocking the creative potential of folks who haven't spent a lifetime honing their skills. You won't have to be a highly skilled (painter/musician/dancer/etc.) to make great art.
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Why do I care about artistic skill or unlocking creative potential of masses with next bicycle of mind. They’ll probably just do tedious culture war shit with it. It’s not obvious in 2022 that empowering more artistic output is “good” and “Progress.”
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Insights used to be a highly fungible currency within large, liquid markets. They’re now more like 1/1 NFTs from nowhere, headed nowhere. Resale value 1% if you can find liquidity at all. Notable that NFT projects that succeed do so by creating entire worlds for them to inhabit.
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This is the problem. Insights by nature are short, lightweight memes that hope to travel vitally. But now the minimum viable meme must come packaged with an entire damn extended universe, complete with lore, vibes, and internal epic arcs. Way too much work.
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Exactly. Now if you say this excitedly in a TED talk voice of profound revelation, you just sound like an idiot. You need more. A lot more. Mere “empowerment and tools” narratives just sound like a dreary prospects for more snowballing shittiness.
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Replying to @vgr
everyone can easily create really cool content would have been a Schelling point 10 years ago
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This is on my mind because I’m doing my first post-Covid public talk soon (eth devcon in bogota), and for the first time in 10+ y of giving talks, I’m trying to construct it around something other than “insights” I don’t think vaguely TED-like substances work as talks anymore.
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