I’ve read Wired magazine for over 20 years – I remember seeing my very first issue in a very eclectic bookstore in Toronto (now sadly gone) called “This Ain’t The Rosedale Library”. Like City Lights in San Francisco, it specialized in carrying both mainstream and subversive books, magazines, and zines. I used to go there during high school with my friend Matthew, patrolling the stacks of interesting stuff looking for the new and different.
Today we’re going to talk a little bit about an interesting phenomenon that I have seen over the last little while which I’m calling Digital Blowback. It occurs when people start actively turning away from digital representations of things and prefer reality.
We’re going to talk a little bit about something that recently been covered in the news right around the time of the election and want to talk about it as it may be an interesting opportunity for those of you out there who are looking for some new type of startup opportunity to really dig into. I am not sure how much of a problem this is (IMHO, it seems to depend a lot on which side of the “aisle” you are on) but let’s talk about it anyway and see if we can deconstruct some opportunities in this space.
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time “talking down” people who seem freaked out, standing on a virtual “ledge” ready to jump off because the Donald was just elected the 45th President of the United States. While his stance on innovation is still up in the air, as I mentioned in a previous post, this is a perfect example of what some may call a Black Swan event, a totally unexpected major outcome.
Back in 2013, I wrote a post about the death of the above, mostly through the unbridled bias which I seeing at the time. If you ask me, true journalism is when a reporter simply reports – they look at the facts of whatever the situation is, then report those facts. Even though outfits like Fox News use the term “We Report. You Decide” they, like pretty much other media outlet, never really does the former.
Let me start out this post by stating unequivocally, I am not voting for either of the above, lest you may feel that I have a leaning one way or another. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I am a libertarian, and unlike Peter Thiel, the billionaire who appeared and spoke for Trump at the RNC, I support neither of the major candidates. I used to very political, but have stepped out of speaking about it, or being very interested in it at all, since oh, around 2012. I stay away from talking about politics for the same reason that I don’t watch hockey any more – trying to keep my blood pressure and heart rate in a normal range. But I digress.
I’ve talked at length before about the Seamless World, wherein some not too distant future, big data, the internet of things, predictive analytics and automation will all come together to create a world without interfaces, where everything we need to happen in our lives simply happens, without our ongoing involvement. We go from fighting with our technology to get it to do what we want, to it finally relieving us of our day-to-day simple burdens and finally allowing technology to be an aide and guide to humankind, instead of enslaving us.
Why is it every time I hear ABC.XYZ, I think of the Jackson Five?
Some thoughts on the restructuring, renaming, rebranding of Google. First of all, I think it’s great for science fiction authors like myself, how many times have we envisioned a future company which provides and runs everything, and are having trouble coming up with a name. This name is perfect for us, it basically means that they do (or will do) everything. I keep thinking about these guys sitting in a back room at Google (oops I mean Alphabet) and thinking – “Gee, what business should we start for letter M, we don’t have an M, we need an M”. I wouldn’t be surprised if some companies change their names in order to simply be that letter.