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This is the inevitable consequence of making society into consumers and not creators. When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do an

This is the inevitable consequence of making society into consumers and not creators. When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do anything creative (in the generative sense), but instead relies on consuming pre-packaged experiences for entertainment, it's inevitable that those with the most resources will be the ones designing your future. This only accelerates as new media becomes both more popular and more expensive (i.e. $50 million Netflix series) as compared to the cost of writing a book (none, essentially.) It's like the old cliche: design your life or it will be designed for you.

beckman466 6y ago
> When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do anything creative (in the generative sense), but instead relies on consuming pre-packaged experiences for entertainment The cause of this is the continued capitalist enclosure and privatization of science and technology. "Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction. Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime." [1] Only a system that honours actual material scarcity of all resources (and thus the immaterial abundance of written/drawn knowledge: blueprints, trade secrets+patents ('intellectual property'), any other type of human knowledge; enabled through the zero-marginal cost of digital reproduction), can change this: hREA (by Mikorizal): http://mikorizal.org/futures.html http://mikorizal.org/futures.html + https://github.com/holo-rea/holo-rea https://github.com/holo-rea/holo-rea holochain: https://developer.holochain.org/docs/concepts/1_the_basics/ https://developer.holochain.org/docs/concepts/1_the_basics/ [1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
danaris 6y ago
> When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do anything creative I'm not sure where you get the idea that this is the case. Yes, creating AAA games and blockbuster films is the province of large corporations with massive budgets and many people. But drawing? Writing short stories? That's something everyone still has access to—more than ever, in fact, because the technology (programs like Photoshop, Scrivener, even very simple text and image editors) makes the process easier in many ways. It's certainly true that there is a lot of corporate-produced content available to consume, and that some people fill their lives with consuming it, but to conclude from that that the modern age makes it impossible, or even significantly more difficult, for the average person to engage in creative endeavors is a ludicrous leap of logic. I, personally, have been working over the past month on writing something that, by the time it is finished, will be something between a novella and a novel in length. Hundreds of millions of people the world over write fanfic and create fan art—and also write original fiction, and create original art, if that distinction matters to your idea of what creativity is—every day, and share it online. Just because it's not published for profit doesn't mean it's not a genuine creative act.

beckman466 6y ago

> When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do anything creative (in the generative sense), but instead relies on consuming pre-packaged experiences for entertainment The cause of this is the continued capitalist enclosure and privatization of science and technology. "Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction. Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime." [1] Only a system that honours actual material scarcity of all resources (and thus the immaterial abundance of written/drawn knowledge: blueprints, trade secrets+patents ('intellectual property'), any other type of human knowledge; enabled through the zero-marginal cost of digital reproduction), can change this: hREA (by Mikorizal): http://mikorizal.org/futures.html http://mikorizal.org/futures.html + https://github.com/holo-rea/holo-rea https://github.com/holo-rea/holo-rea holochain: https://developer.holochain.org/docs/concepts/1_the_basics/ https://developer.holochain.org/docs/concepts/1_the_basics/ [1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

danaris 6y ago

> When the average person can't write a short story, can't draw, can't do anything creative I'm not sure where you get the idea that this is the case. Yes, creating AAA games and blockbuster films is the province of large corporations with massive budgets and many people. But drawing? Writing short stories? That's something everyone still has access to—more than ever, in fact, because the technology (programs like Photoshop, Scrivener, even very simple text and image editors) makes the process easier in many ways. It's certainly true that there is a lot of corporate-produced content available to consume, and that some people fill their lives with consuming it, but to conclude from that that the modern age makes it impossible, or even significantly more difficult, for the average person to engage in creative endeavors is a ludicrous leap of logic. I, personally, have been working over the past month on writing something that, by the time it is finished, will be something between a novella and a novel in length. Hundreds of millions of people the world over write fanfic and create fan art—and also write original fiction, and create original art, if that distinction matters to your idea of what creativity is—every day, and share it online. Just because it's not published for profit doesn't mean it's not a genuine creative act.