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I just turned 30, and this is the first time I've felt too old for the Internet. I can't even pretend to make sense of this, but it recalls a "how to work with

by hirsin 5y ago

I just turned 30, and this is the first time I've felt too old for the Internet. I can't even pretend to make sense of this, but it recalls a "how to work with your new gen Z colleagues" sketch I saw. I was astounded that the author is GenX - that was also one of the few coherent points I could pull from this. The first paragraphs are fine - sure, redefine the founding myth and culture as lore, go for it - but around "memeing normcore into existence" my eyes glazed over.

Ourgon 5y ago
You're not too old for the internet, just for that patch of it. I'm somewhere around 56 - never can remember my actual age and I don't feel like calculating it - so I've seen the 'net grow from that alternative to FIDOnet I could get through an account on the university VAXen through the eternal September through the dot.com boom through all that followed and I feel just as much at home on it as I did once I found out it was a lot cheaper to mess around there than it was to ring around random BBSs. The 'net is the road system connecting places, many of which I never enter. I'll leave this advanced formulation of snake oil to whomever feels attracted to such, just like I did with its predecessors. You can, too...
rjknight 5y ago
This basically goes back to the conflict between idealism and materialism. The article is putting forward an idealist position - that ideas (lore, memes, culture) matter, and in some cases matter more than material facts. In this view, there are many potential cultural niches, and entrepreneurs are engaged in finding them. Production is downstream of ideals: certain products can only be made, or made well, by cultures with the necessary ideals, so the formation of ideals is an important part of innovation and entrepreneurship. This would be contrasted with the materialist view, which says that culture is downstream of material reality and modes of production. In this view, "company culture" is just an emergent phenomenon that arises from the material activities of the firm, and its rules and policies, which emerge out of material conflicts over resources. Far from being a new thing, this debate is as old as modern capitalism itself, and is prefigured by religious and philosophical debates going back many centuries before that.

by hirsin 5y ago

Ourgon 5y ago

You're not too old for the internet, just for that patch of it. I'm somewhere around 56 - never can remember my actual age and I don't feel like calculating it - so I've seen the 'net grow from that alternative to FIDOnet I could get through an account on the university VAXen through the eternal September through the dot.com boom through all that followed and I feel just as much at home on it as I did once I found out it was a lot cheaper to mess around there than it was to ring around random BBSs. The 'net is the road system connecting places, many of which I never enter. I'll leave this advanced formulation of snake oil to whomever feels attracted to such, just like I did with its predecessors. You can, too...

rjknight 5y ago

This basically goes back to the conflict between idealism and materialism. The article is putting forward an idealist position - that ideas (lore, memes, culture) matter, and in some cases matter more than material facts. In this view, there are many potential cultural niches, and entrepreneurs are engaged in finding them. Production is downstream of ideals: certain products can only be made, or made well, by cultures with the necessary ideals, so the formation of ideals is an important part of innovation and entrepreneurship. This would be contrasted with the materialist view, which says that culture is downstream of material reality and modes of production. In this view, "company culture" is just an emergent phenomenon that arises from the material activities of the firm, and its rules and policies, which emerge out of material conflicts over resources. Far from being a new thing, this debate is as old as modern capitalism itself, and is prefigured by religious and philosophical debates going back many centuries before that.