In the middle of the middle, nowhere really. A quiver, a shudder, a slight lean in any direction will send us skittering into a waveform collapse.
I should be painting walls, moving computers, finishing movies, preparing for an accounting odyssey, taking a bath. Instead, I am staring into the silver haze of inspiration, to see if any forms emerge. Perhaps weed should be involved, but let’s go ahead dry and straight first.
Here on my left is the familiar paradigm of consumption – money, product, marketing / manipulation, sales, profit. Here on my right the so called reputation economy, an emergent freak utopia. Transition? If consumption is coming to an end then whatever happens next might just be perfectly suited to my sensibilities and powers. Thriving for Dan Kelly could be about a catastrophic failure of the suicidal trends we call the 1st world.
I was inspired by listening to the Starship Sofa podcast # 283 and the carefully considered rebirth of Amazing Stories. As DOG comes to completion, I’ve been thinking about my future making movies and the premise that being an artist could equal sprouts in my bowl. This very assumption is entangled with all manner of odd ideas – that we need to justify our existence, ‘earn’ a living and that gaining a degree of mastery over the existing paradigms is the only option. That we must keep our expenses less than or equal to our revenues, or that our needs, basic and beyond, can be magically be met because a person or persons perceive us as worthy.
So there’s a pretty entrenched story that’s just begging to be deconstructed. This is not a new technique for procrastination, btw. If DOG and Dan are aligned with the hypothetical transition, then all manner of encouragement will be enjoyed. Otherwise, sad obscurity. I’ve always had a foot in the future, which means I don’t flourish in the dull and soon to be dead past. Time to step gingerly out of that reeking muck, the unwitting death worship of my ancestors, done.
A concise description of consumption – items, services and information/content – could be contrasted with emerging weird paradigms. I am prolly mostly interested in content’s transition, but that might be my antique assumptions about the dying paradigm.
Money is defined as an abstract representation of value. Market is defined as the potential for profit (increasing money) by matching a need (actual or imposed) to a product. Marketing could be defined as the range of communication required to achieve profit – from simple claims of efficacy to elaborate cognitive hacks and myth making. Finally, I’ll define consumer as an incessant annihilator of both value and product.
For items, raw materials are extracted, shipped and made into components that are eventually assembled into completed and packaged items. The items are stored and eventually distributed (more shipping) either directly to the consumer or through a chain of wholesale/retail. Items are consumed – degraded and destroyed – and must be constantly replaced.
Contrasting trends include – matter compilers, 3D printing, teleportation, maker movement, local artisans and regional fabrication, repair, reuse, doing without, simplification, going off the grid, home farms, cooperatives, rugged, quality, built to last, energy independence, sustainability.
Services are usually local and imply varying degrees of projected or actual expertise, often backed by the imprimatur of law. Plumbers and electricians must be licensed, counselors and personal trainers less so. Highly profitable services are often colonized by parasitical industries, degrading the quality of the expertise. Medical and dental services are rife with misconceptions and willful ignorance, (chemotherapy and silver mercury fillings) that would never be acceptable in lower profit trades like carpentry or welding. Services can be bundled with items or content. Services are temporal, they do not persist unless embodied in an item-like outcome. Any such outcome is eventually degraded and destroyed.
Contrasting trends include personal responsibility, self help, exercise, diet, mediation, do it yourself, maker movement, barter off the books, simplification, living with less, community support, sustainability, reputation
Content is information, capable of being stored, replicated and transmitted with high or perfect fidelity. Movies, music, recordings, documents, software, databases, stories, etc are all content. In the consumer paradigm, content is equated with physical items by limiting replication via law and artifice.
Contrasting trends include open source development, maker movement, shareware, freeware, social media, hackers, whistle blowers, thepiratebay, reputation, crowdfunding, (Kickstarter) blogs, internet archive (internetarchive, wikipedia), tutorials, independent artists, self publishing (Amazon), Direct distribution (iTunes).
Mindboggling interview with Wool author Hugh Howey on Starship Sofa #284 about his meteoric rise via self publishing on Amazon and how to give away stories for free by forcing Amazon to price match – a slick jujitsu move.
Almost everything ever written by Cory Doctorow
Reputation economies, woofie, FICO score…
Star Trek IV The Journey Home
Kirk
(to crew members in 20th century San Francisco)
They are still using money, we’ve got to find some.
•••
Gillian
(Paying for pizza, miffed)
Don’t tell me they don’t use money in the 23rd century?
Kirk
(slightly chagrined)
Well, they don’t.