Life In Code: Part Two (5,6,7,8) (Patreon)

4 Essays this week! Much to chew on, come when you are ready.

Will just jot my way through bits that impacted me, many of which I’ve absorbed all the way into my soul:

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THE MUSEUM OF ME (1998)

disintermediation: such a charged word! So intimately familiar in our modern reality, as a positive and negative spectre.

The positive: allowing anyone to participate, increasing accessibility, removing the price gouging middlemen who step in between the seller and buyer. What value doth your intermediation offer, ticketmaster!? Car salesmen?! Do we need you!??!?!

The negative: ouughghahghgh maybe those human curators had some value

“Removal of the intermediary. All those who stand in the middle of a transaction, whether financial or intellectual: out! Brokers and agents and middlemen of every description: goodbye! Travel agents, real-estate agents, insurance agents, stockbrokers, mortgage brokers, consolidators, and jobbers—all the scrappy percentniks who troll the bywaters of capitalist exchange—who needs you? All those hard-striving immigrants climbing their way into the lower middle class through the penny-ante deals of capitalism, the transfer points too small for the big guys to worry about—find yourself some other way to make a living. Small retailers and store clerks, salespeople of every kind—a hindrance, idiots not to be trusted. Even the professional handlers of intellectual goods, anyone who sifts through information, books, paintings, knowledge, selecting and summing up—librarians, book reviewers, curators, disk jockeys, teachers, editors, analysts—why trust anyone but yourself to make judgements about what is more of less interesting, valuable, authentic, or worthy of your attention? No one, no professional interloper, is supposed to come between you and your desires, which according to this idea, are nuanced, difficult to communicate, irreducible, and, most of all, unique.” (86)

Prophecies all over the place, from the advent of internet decision paralysis to echo chamber polarization to the removal of human beings from service positions for the middle/lower classes.

"The lure of personal service that was dangled before the middle classes, momentarily making us all feel almost as lucky as the rich, is being withdrawn. In the internet age, under the pressure of globalized capitalism and its slimmed-down profit margins, only the very wealthy will be served by actual human beings. The rest of us must make do with web pages, and feel happy about it" (87)

"Physical reality—the discomfort and difficulty of abandoning one's normal life—put a natural break on the formation of cults..." (89)

This chapter really synthesizes my interwoven beliefs about art, religion and technology. To me, the belief that "art is subjective" and the technological erasing of "irrational" physical spaces contribute to a profoundly anti-religious impulse that you know best. What you feel can't be argued. It's best if you just sort yourself by your subjective taste without any regard for the reality of Others, who fundamentally have nothing to do with you unless you like them and they agree with you.

"It is a view that depends on the idea that desire is not social, not stimulated by what others want, but generated internally, and that the satisfaction of desires is not dependent upon other persons, organizations, structures, or governments...

No need to care for my neighbour next door when I can stay with my chosen neighbours in the ether, my email friends and the visitors to sites I visit, people who think as I do, who want what I want. No need for messy debate and the whole rigamarole of government with all its creaky, bothersome structures. " (92)

"The internet ideal represents a retreat not only from political life but also from culture—from that tumultuous conversation in which we try to talk to one another about our shared experiences. As members of a culture, we see the same movie, read the same book, hear the same string quartet. Although it is enormously difficult for us to agree on what we might have seen, read, or heard, it is out of that difficult conversation that real culture arises. Whether or not we come to an agreement or understanding, even if some decide that understanding and meaning are impossible, we are still sitting around the same campfire. (92)

... I've noticed that I kinda have a consistent ideology emerging from all my things. Maybe that's a decent goal, to have someone make a 90 minute "The Philosophy of CJ The X" video essay that makes some semblance of useful sense one day. Give me another year

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FIBER OPTIC NIGHTS (1999)

Warm hot blooded human heart life anecdoting throughout this one. Loved it but will only share this one quote I have highlighted and this one I have underlined:

"Oh, the exuberance! The joy of internet creation. The excitement of living exactly in the right time, in the center where everything is about to happen" (98)

"...everywhere you can see, hear, feel the madness of rebellion and the narcissism of self-congratulation..." (103)

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OFF THE HIGH (2000)

She's in Toronto!!!

Really compelling chronicle of libertarian web builders slowly converting towards social controls as their individualism is seized by corporate technocrats.

"'Libertarians are used to fighting the government,' he said, 'and not corporations...'"

"'I know we don't like regulation where we can avoid it, but...'"

"'We have to make sure that when people go to the internet, they get the internet,' he went on the say, meaning the real net, the true one, the original—whatever that might mean to him, or us.

We must go back to that internet, even if it existed for only a flickering moment, or never existed except in idylls and nostalgia. We must route around the new bad corporate net; or create a superset of it; or an alternative. Or something." (110-111)

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TO CATCH A FALLING KNIFE (2002)

I always love a good exposition about the storytelling myth metrics of the stock market.

It drives me a little insane! :]

One of my favourite free lectures in this area is Aswarth Damodaran on company valuation. if you wanna experience a little overture on how "rational" corporate finance is on the highest level go have some fun with that. I remain rather fresh to the fields of business and finance abut this will elucidate how I want to embolden us down here in Goods & Services and critique (understand) the highest corporate realms that are so obscure and inaccessible to us.

Ullman provides just a gorgeous insanely ahead of its time analysis of the technocratic VC funded capitalism that we are swimming in today. fdsjlkdfklslkjfddljksflksdjfklfjdsjklsdfjlkfd

"A new economic order is dawning, a new reality of existence... In the new capitalism of technology, profits do not matter.

All right, maybe profits do matter, but not right now, maybe not for years. What determines if a startup or web company is succeeding is the number of eyeballs looking at the site, the count of unique visitors, of advertising click-throughs. The idea is to bring millions of viewers to the site. Once all those people are assembled, the companies will find a way to "monetize eyeballs"—that is, make money off the assembly and turn a profit.

In the meantime, a web company needs revenue, money to pay salaries and operating expenses. For the startup, the first revenue source is a round of financing from venture capitalists; a year later, there may be a second round; yet a third after more time has gone by....

I spoke with the founder of a startup. I asked him if he had a path to profitability; he did not. I asked if he had a revenue plan; he did. His answer was "Go IPO!" That is, have an initial public offering and reap the millions from the sale of the stock. Another way to look at this transaction is: Get the general public to finance a company with no known path to making money."

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 I like talking about business (sustainable provision of Goods & Services to people who desire them) because we live in a world where more and more people are forced to be gig workers and entrepreneurs. More people work-at-home employees and more people have multiple careers, sometimes simultaneously. We HAVE to talk about business, how to do it well and in ways that retain our souls as well as the souls of others. It's a reality all of us deal with while we're instagram story-ing about the evils of capitalism. When you're an uber driver or a YouTuber, the platforms that pay us (for all their miraculous benefits) don't give us benefits or paid leave or retirement funds. WE HAVE TO BECOME MORE RESPONSIBLE, FOR OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER.

Don't feel bad for figuring out your business and your finance with dignity!!! This is somethign I want to strongly encourage in my community. Do not despair at the mere fact of earnign a living!

If you're gonna get mad at capitalism, direct that at these high level abstract financial structures that only the rich can afford to play, that either provide zero value, or provide it wildly unsustainably forcing us all into hyperrealities that no one asked for and no one can pay for!!!!!!!!!!

"The Nasdaq was now a market reacting to itself: Stock prices rise; people buy because they want to get into the hot market; all that buying pressure causes stock prices to rise again. Then more people want a piece of the action; stock prices rise yet again. People buy; prices rise; etc. A sobered-up investor had to know this iteration could not continue to infinity." (124)

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Look at this meme I found that I can't share with anyone normal:

Anyways sorry for a kind of cerebral rant about money, I don't understand this all enough yet to make a useful and true video about it but I am trying and I hope to one day.

Some things are better than other things, at least. Right?

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ummmm. okay well anyways let me know what you thought of the book