The future is now, if you want it

AI is a big deal, and only getting bigger every day. This is a ground truth, even after everyone finishes arguing about if it's any good, whether or not it will kill us all, and if we even agree on what it is.

Zooming out a bit more, AI is just technology. A simple way to think about technology is as a deflationary force - it makes stuff cheaper. So the first question is do you want:

• More of the thing for the same price or
• The same amount of the thing for a lower price?

And the follow up question is -

How does the answer to the first question change as the cost of technology approaches zero?

Moore's Law is one of the best-documented examples of this happening.

Some of us are starting to answer the first question, but most haven't even begun. So there's still a ton of alpha in just exploring answers. But the future will be begin to distribute itself more evenly and spreads will close.

Before long, everyone will have a tuned content production pipeline that can publish images, copy and even video that will be hard to distinguish from the real thing. Marketing will converge to an audience of one.

We will get the dead Internet. Endless slop. And that's the good part.

The bad part is that phishing will also approach an audience of one. This is already rampant in crypto, and only getting worse. Unfortunately we are all next.

So how will we adapt growth to a world where trust is gone from the internet?

This is what I'll talk about in this newsletter. I'll share what has worked in the past, what I think will be relevant in the future, what dynamics will change and what that will mean, and thoughts on how to act now and get a head start.

Notes on the newsletter title:

I love a good mashup. The title is me avoiding using that old chestnut "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." So I went with a meme, The Future is Now Old Man married with WAR IS OVER (if you want it).