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I hate the idea of wrapping all interactions into transactions. It flies in the face of an idea that might I want to give something away for free. I would then

by karol 5y ago

I hate the idea of wrapping all interactions into transactions. It flies in the face of an idea that might I want to give something away for free. I would then presumably need to package this into a transaction for 0 cents. Economy is part of life, but we also interact on biological, spiritual and emotional planes which may be driven by different economies.

hnbad 5y ago
It's the logical conclusion to neoliberalism though. We're already coerced to view our personal time as a finite resource we "spend" on activities and to constantly consider our return on investment, to optimize our leisure time for maximum enjoyment and recovery. Even friendships and relationships are thought of as transactional and talked about in terms of how much you get out for what you put in. And anyway how is your side hustle going? Do you really need to binge another show on Netflix when you could be writing that pitch deck? Yes, not everybody does that and not everybody does that to the fullest extent, but it's the same ideology just applied to every last facet of interaction. Of course this isn't how the web started. The Internet was built on military technology and first settled by scientists, amateurs and aspiring tech nerds. Everything was free because it seemed obvious that "information wants to be free", which really just meant charging for bytes more than it cost to generate, store and transfer them (i.e. deriving "surplus value" or "profit" if you want) seemed like a rip-off even when commercial BBSes started popping up. If you wanted to put an edge on it, you could even call the early web a form of "primitive communism". But there's no reason to bring politics into discussions of technology of course. Running websites costs money and how else are people supposed to turn a profit on providing a service if we don't find better ways for them to charge visitors for access?
- karol 5y ago
  I understand this perspective. To me your example clearly points out where neoliberalism has its limits. What strikes me is how linear this thinking is. In real life we need to receive a mixture of good and bad examples to truly advance our experience, whereas this model seems like it would be a stream of mini pseudo-advancements packaged in transactional wrapping to maximize creator's benefit. Saying that, I am also aware that many existing ways of monetization already work like that. I think existing internet contains both the commercial and benevolent 'free, no strings attached' models and to me it strikes a good balance.

by karol 5y ago

hnbad 5y ago

It's the logical conclusion to neoliberalism though. We're already coerced to view our personal time as a finite resource we "spend" on activities and to constantly consider our return on investment, to optimize our leisure time for maximum enjoyment and recovery. Even friendships and relationships are thought of as transactional and talked about in terms of how much you get out for what you put in. And anyway how is your side hustle going? Do you really need to binge another show on Netflix when you could be writing that pitch deck? Yes, not everybody does that and not everybody does that to the fullest extent, but it's the same ideology just applied to every last facet of interaction. Of course this isn't how the web started. The Internet was built on military technology and first settled by scientists, amateurs and aspiring tech nerds. Everything was free because it seemed obvious that "information wants to be free", which really just meant charging for bytes more than it cost to generate, store and transfer them (i.e. deriving "surplus value" or "profit" if you want) seemed like a rip-off even when commercial BBSes started popping up. If you wanted to put an edge on it, you could even call the early web a form of "primitive communism". But there's no reason to bring politics into discussions of technology of course. Running websites costs money and how else are people supposed to turn a profit on providing a service if we don't find better ways for them to charge visitors for access?

karol 5y ago
I understand this perspective. To me your example clearly points out where neoliberalism has its limits. What strikes me is how linear this thinking is. In real life we need to receive a mixture of good and bad examples to truly advance our experience, whereas this model seems like it would be a stream of mini pseudo-advancements packaged in transactional wrapping to maximize creator's benefit. Saying that, I am also aware that many existing ways of monetization already work like that. I think existing internet contains both the commercial and benevolent 'free, no strings attached' models and to me it strikes a good balance.