Sitting on a train going backwards from Salamanca to Madrid. My wife hates this sensation, but I find something about it very futuristic.
"We go into the future, looking in the rearview mirror" type beat.
The more I travel, the more I'm in wonder how truly unique every place is. And how everything is exactly the same. The Spanish landscape is just California in a lot of ways. That is a massive flattening, but a kid of the internet generation sees the connection in everything. Whether it's there or not.
In a higher sense, there's nothing new under the sun. Everyone has to sleep, eat, drink, shit, work, socialize. There's a reason that people universally walk into a church for its beauty, thinking somehow its message is external of the architecture. You don't get one without the other, but it's also universal to rationalize these things to ourselves. The same is true for culture at large. You want to remove yourself from participation, just to realize that's another form of participation. Inescapable environments. Also known as truth.
Speech is the format of those that haven't seen enough.
I find the more that I see, the more that I experience... I gradually become quieter. I think this is why kids that grow up in NYC tend to speak/write a lot or not at all. There's no well adjusted New Yorker. Because they've either seen too much or too little, all too quickly.
What I wonder is what effect this has both on culture (international and local) as well as the individual's interior.
Nothing excites me culturally anymore. Not really. This year the only long standing obsession has been the Mk Gee album (album of the year). Everything else has been a massive blast at me at all times. The maelstrom we've discussed before.
The thing about explosions, is that the force IS flattening.
People talk about cultural explosions like it's some diverse thing. NO! WRONG! It's a flattening thing. So much gets produced at once, it completely flattens everything.
The good news is we have so much to reference from history of what happens after a city gets flattened. Rebuilding of Tokyo. Rebuilding of Berlin. Both incredibly hot cultural centers after getting obliterated.
(Side note: It's the victors that cool down. That's why winning back to back is always a big deal.)
Action is the format of those that have had enough.
Sony was built out of the ashes of WWII. Into both an economic powerhouse, international symbol of technological innovation, and beloved brand of personal identity.
Perhaps it is time to view our culture as a war torn city. The culprit being the past 25 years of internet technologies. And now we are in the ashes. Yes, people still walk around selling their wares. And yes, every once in a while we come across something we ACTUALLY need. But we are in the ashes nevertheless.
First let's talk about what caused this explosion. "THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF EVERYTHING"
Previously, a sense of international style was gate kept by the elites and the extremely daring. I think it was Rei Kawakubo of Comme De Garcon that talked about going to Paris from Tokyo and coming back with a whole new understanding of garments etc. Combined with a reinforcement of her local avant garde scene like Yohji Yamamoto. This would lead to CDG formation and the powerhouse it would become.
Global media networks. Status cultures attached to those networks. Cheap plane tickets. Combined with a need for ever growing institutions. Gatekeeping becomes a thing of the past ~ Mr. Abloh lived this reality as a practice ~ so broad based international styles take over. Versus more local, diverse sensibilities of the previous generations. --perhaps some cultural writers complained about this during the advent of Sears and mail order catalogues--
I wrote before, the democratization of everything as the amateurization of everything. We live in a sort of mediocre environment. And Mediocrity (capital M) can't change things. It recycles. You combine mediocrity with the human need for status and a lot of flowing capital - you get very funny results.
In fact you get an explosion. A lot of production, to unclear ends. Leveling everything until the fire burns out. But a few mega-institutions stand. As a sort of glass structure that the fire erected from the sand. Meta. Elon Musk. Uber/Airbnb. The counterbalance to all the mediocrity is the accumulation of power by the competent - and tech power is the power de jour.
But what happens to the people? Those that exist as the fabric of the culture. Or otherwise known as ~ consumers, users. We obviously see them standing around the glass towers. I mean, we are all there. Either at the new ones or the old ones. All religions have sects after all.
This is the post-explosion. Or said another way, the time to terraform
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it"
I think it's too simple to say things like ~ counterculture is staying off the algorithm, culture can't be venture backed, local over international mindedness.
The internet is crazy because it is both nature and nurture.
When you talk to people, and ask where they grew up. It gives insight to a lot their behavior, style, etc. I grew up the woods. Small town, close enough to the big city. My wife grew up in the valley of LA. My cofounder grew up in East Village. One of my best friends grew up in Maine.
At a certain point however, everyone grew up online. And everyone was fed and informed by each other. This has both quickened in when a child is introduced to the environment (iPad babies) and has expanded in reach (proliferation of networked mobile computing).
In my shared talk on creative directing Mars. We talked about the internet as the spawn point for what will shape the adventure that is making Mars a reality.
But we have a more immediate thing to save, the internet the culture that spawns from it - which more and more feels like all culture.
The internet today is flat earth. Uniform, high visibility, no way out… The internet of tomorrow needs to feel like SF. Dense and natural, with massively altering topologies shaping the micro-climates and communities.
These topologies (for the internet) will be formed by the strength of values expressed, realized, and mutually reinforced by their citizens.
Crypto is best example of this going both right and wrong. And to be clear, it going wrong is also incredibly important. Because it creates the friction for those that weren't going to participate anyway, forming that thin line we refer to as a border. Without borders, we don't have distinction. Without distinction, we can't define alternative values. Exclusion has a function.
This is also why I hated the term "Web3". It implies that Web2 was going to be a subsection of the larger new Web3 internet we were migrating to. Which is wrong. And that's why I advocate for thinking about Crypto as an alternate timeline, or a division of the internet biological kingdom.
How do you destroy the tower of Babel? You don't, their actions are already on the course towards confusion.
Facebook and Google represents a Tower of Babel moment. Facebook, a tower that touts over 3 Billion users. The world population is 7.95 Billion. Increasingly even more connected through emergent powers of generative AI (perfect global translation).
Tower of Babel.
"5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
The confusion from Babel was part of the plan the whole time. It created the diversity we enjoy throughout the world today. Differing foods, language, cultures, technologies.
We have been confused by these technologies. And the expressed desire to exit the tower has never been louder. Despite the inertia working against us, a scattering is coming.
WE NEED EQUALLY RADICAL ALTERNATIVE FUTURES ~ NOT JUST A REPLACEMENT
Far too many alternative projects rely deeply on “X but alternative” frameworks. We see this a lot, and it always fizzles out the same way. It’s critical to break out of those pitfalls.
To design radical alternatives, we need clarity on the current form/values/distribution of the global order today. Let's start by looking at the 4 horseman.
Facebook - An international order to connect all people.
Google - An international order to organize information.
Apple - An international order to create compute devices for communication.
Amazon - An international order to distribute to all people (both goods and compute).
Uncovering the values of a system can be tricky. There are the explicit values that anyone can understand. There are underlying values that act as a sort invisible hand over the whole apparatus. And finally there are the second order effects of these values that create unintentional traits that companies didn't intend.
Let's do a simple exercise with Apple.
First and foremost, Apple values the individual. It is seen in the hero worship of the founder, Steve Jobs. In ads such as "Here's To The Crazy Ones". It's the underlying principle of why they make personal computers for personal empowerment.
The invisible hand value is status. Acquiring an Apple product is an elevated, near luxury experience. In valuing the individual, they reinforce that the product is inextricably tied to great individuals of high status. This permeates everything. And if you chat with ex-Apple people you'll learn just how status driven the internal politics of the place is.
The unintentional trait of these combined is narcissism. And narcissism breeds isolation. It's hard to connect if you only care about yourself. The iPhone is a narcissistic product, a literal reflective black mirror. The demonstration videos around Vision Pro were high isolating, a user alone on the couch, wrapped in media.
You can do this for each of the orgs listed.
How do we design radical alternative futures? → Start with alternative values that can't be easily vampire attacked by incumbents.
The clearest example I won't have to explain, is what's happening in the AI wearables space. Always on, always listening devices.
No giant hardware maker can copy this, it feeds into too many consumer suspicions as is and goes against classical definitions of their stated values like "Apple Privacy".
Now, whether or not you believe an always on listening device is a positive thing is a separate question. The point is that Apple and these other companies would actively harm themselves pursuing a device like this. Which gives potential green space to emergent companies.
How do we find alternative values?
Well the purest way is the actually have and believe them yourself. Either through your life journey of experiences, or readings, or whatever. But if you want to actively pursue the discovery of alternative values, here is a non-exhaustive list of how to do so.
The antonym game. Taking the exercise I did of Apple previously, and defining the antonym. If Apple is about the individual, what is a hardware company where the highest value is the collective? Or what is a hardware company that points out, instead of in - Humane has this vibe.
The reference dig. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love my references, crate digging for quotes, and the recommendations my friends gift me. There's a well spring of values from incredible technologists across the decades who simply got the timing wrong. Revive old projects/theses and see where it might take you.
Meditation. It might feel like a copout tactic, but whenever I take the time to actually meditate - I find that my subconscious offers me some unique trails that I was not able to access previously. Take these options seriously.
Steal from other industries. Tech has a very specific way of thinking about and applying their genius towards the world. Talk about the future with people from ad agencies, banks, pharma... you'll grok on values you weren't applying in your discovery process.
Manifestos. Don't be afraid of the edges. Read the Unabomber Manifesto. There's nothing wrong with reading it. Read the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
Embodying alternative values through design and engineering is the only way to create the diverse internet cultures we dreamed of. But there's one more piece of the puzzle...
"Turn on, tune in, drop out"
Too many of you haven't chosen to drop out. When an embodied alternative value hits, you'll realize you're giving folks an exit route. The first person that takes the exit, needs to be the person(s) that built it. Too many builders want folks to take their exit, but afraid to drive on it themselves.
I'm bias, but the folks that live this value so truly are the USB Club folks. You hardly see them engaging on popular social networks. Instead they are deep on Arena and swapping files on their own product. They built the exit, and they take it everyday. Providing a model for others looking for the same.
This is the first and most important test of alternative values. Can you take your own exit, and stay on the road. If the answer is no, there's no there there.
What's at stake? - A call for the scattering.
What’s at stake is the golden path. A flourishing humanity. I love the internet in a way not too dissimilar to why I love America — it represents a deep freedom.
But if you don’t tend to it, it can become stale. Into the scattering and back out again. The diversity of cultures, practices, the forms of the old, birth of the new, and the power struggles between them. This should be embraced.
If you made it this far, do this simple exercise.
Close your eyes and think of an image.
The image should be of an activity made possible through some new internet thing.
What values does that image represent?
What’s holding back those values from manifesting today?
That’s your starting point.
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I use this image a lot. It applies to the whole of the internet. Not just Crypto. Not just New Hardware. Set new images → find new land → earn new problems.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light