Upstream #208
technopoly ??, measureship ??, dirt ??, elevators ??,dots ??.
Well, what a difference a few days make. Sun. Glorious sun. Went for an absolutely cracking hike, got a lovely award and having an exceptionally busy start to the year, with some cracking research, brand and strategy projects. Good times. Ok. Let’s go.
“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear."
Hannah Arendt
culture // technopoly ??
Media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman wrote in his 1992 book Technopoly that "New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop”. It’s today’s reality. Henry Farrell wrote about degraded democratic publics. How the problem is "not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings.”. Technologies through which we see the public, shape how we understand it. The entire system of internet pornography, for example, is optimised for the people willing to pay for it. Which is a tiny fraction, with weird tastes (e.g. choking etc). But their tastes set the tone. So it’s a distorted view (esp for young men). Beth Bentley wrote about Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves To Death, and how "our undoing can come perhaps not from what we consciously oppose, but from what we unthinkingly embrace”. The road to hell is paved with good intentions etc. And Andrew Trousdale also wrote about Amusing Ourselves to Death and the two trade off’s of modern media. #1 the price of instant information and #2 the price of mass amusement. The former is a world that’s altered the meaning of “being informed”, one that promotes the idea of flooding the zone with shit, and one where no one trusts anything or anyone (TikTokers are preferred to experts ffs). The latter is a world where pleasing consumption, eclipses meaning and mattering, and where the end of seriousness, means everything's a meme or a LOL for the socials.
brands // measureship ??
Peter Drucker famously said, “what gets measured, get’s managed”. Which is true. But there’s also Goodhart’s law, which states that “when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure” (see the Cobra Effect). You can game the system. Or focus on a number and ignore everything else, including quality. Measurement though, as Paul Worthington wrote, is the soup du jour and Measureship is replacing Leadership. Technology and digitisation massively increased the surface area of what can be measured, and now a culture of efficiency and optimisation dominates. The hallmark problems of Measureship as Paul says, can be defined as; 1. Anti-human, 2. Directionless, 3. No New Ideas, 4. Lazily Value Extractive. Ultimately, however, there is a price that gets paid for pointing the entirety of the energy of the corporation toward the quantification of incremental efficiency gains and opportunistic value extraction, and this is that unless you have monopolistic advantages, performance first slips, and then declines precipitously, as customers begin routing around and rejecting increasingly terrible experiences, weak value propositions, and “enshittified” brands.Remember, just because it’s measured, doesn't mean it matters (to customers).
creativity // dirt ??
Sometimes for a person, or brand, the most creative thing you can do, is to lean into your weaknesses or imperfections. Make them a beautiful constraint. Either flip them into positives, or just embrace them as things that makes you unique. As Michael Caine said, use the difficulty. It’s about Embracing Your Dirt. Owning it. Like Guinness’s "good things come to those who wait". Or Avis’s "because we’re number two, we try harder”. Or of course VW’s original Think Small. Sometimes in a world of indifference, it’s these imperfections or weaknesses that make you distinct or different. Ryanair embrace their dirt. Instead of pretending they have a service, they own their lack of one. Not having one, makes their flights cheaper, which is what they’re really about. People get it. It’s less annoying when you know what to expect. It’s authentic. And it’s working for them.
technology // elevators ??
This piece on how ideas in science are like elevators was great. People in science often feel like all the good discoveries have been made. Like the good ideas are already out there. They think finding ideas is like mining or drilling. Where we keep doing the same thing and it gets progressively harder. But it’s not like that. It’s more like an elevator left by aliens. At first we haven’t a clue, but we figure it out. And suddenly we’re racing upwards. We think we’ll be in space soon, but then it stops. So we get to understand elevators, and we build taller ones. Then that stops. We think we need taller buildings, until we build hot air balloons. And up we go. Till we stop. Then it’s helicopters. Then rocket ships. Until we need to invent something else. Each shift, enabled by new ideas. Each new idea enables more new ideas. Zoe Scamon’s well shared piece on Agentic AI and Ezra Klein talking about AGI feels a bit like this. Like we’re moving from elevators, to trans-dimensional space ships. Maybe we are.
Five random (ish) things:
Watching // dots ??
Loved this piece with Howardena Pindell as she explains her inspiration, her view of the world, her way of creative expression and her relationship with circles and numbers. She has a unique and extraordinary way of creating. Right on ??.