Most importantly Content keeps exploding. Total available human Attention does not grow.
So how does Adtech generate more and more revenue and sells more and more ads year on year?
Simple answer - Fraud.
430 karma · joined June 25, 2024
So how does Adtech generate more and more revenue and sells more and more ads year on year?
Simple answer - Fraud.
If you are selling more ads than there are minutes in a day * population some large enough group is getting mind fucked.
In the past the Signal was - look at me, look at all these luxury items I have accumulated, look at my leisure activities, you want to be like me - do what I say.
Today the Signal is - I am so smart, Farmer Joe and his herd of illiterates has validated I am a genius, look at my networth, look at my ideas, you want to be like me - pay ATTENTION to me - do what I say.
And this has a huge impact on trajectory of the majority of businesses. Cause with scale, they become dependent on other experts from Finance, Marketing, Sales, Logistics etc who take over decision making and leadership as firms grow in size.
You can see it in every sector of the economy. Not just Tech. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson don't end up creating and running a Disney anymore cause the amount of time to specialize in their own field keeps increasing.
Look at Finance. As soon as an org has more than a few offices in different countries they very quickly learn how to take advantage of difference in labor costs, interest rates, forex, corporate tax rates, rent, real estate costs, subsidy differences, regulatory differences etc. Now scale that up 20 offices in 20 countries and the Financial Engineering dept suddenly a huge say in where the story goes.
Replace Finance with other specializations(Marketing, Sales, Supply chain etc) and the same story plays out.
If you want to have influence you need to have skills across specializations, or know specialists who share your values.
We have a system with ever growing "Content" but non growing Attention. How does a system that Produces more, than there is Consumption capacity survive? - https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_economy_...
As info explodes and specialists dive deeper into their niches, info asymmetry between ppl increases. There are thousands of specialists running in different directions at different speeds. Leaders can't keep up.
Their job is to try to get all these "vectors" aligned toward common goals, prevent fragmentation and division.
And while most specialists think this "sync" process happens through "education" and getting everyone to understand a complex ever changing universe, the truth is large diverse groups are kept in sync via status signalling, carrot/stick etc. This is why leaders will pay attention when you talk in terms of what increases clout/status/wealth/security/followers etc. Cause thats their biggest tool to prevent schisms and collapse.
The real issue is Ambitious kids. Not the ones who have enough looks, contacts, knowledge, skill, intelligence, creativity and imagination to meet their goals but the ones who don't.
Materialism exploits such people more than anyone else. It tells them Donald if you are not admired, respected, loved just work hard, don't stop, keep grinding, keep hustling, accumulate material wealth, accumulate status, accumulate luxury goods and you will get the affection, respect, admiration and love you crave. Its pure bullshit.
This is the stuff that has to stop. We have to take care of these people better and channel their infinite energies into things beyond consumption and materialism. Its the hardest thing to do cause they are an extremely annoying group to deal with constantly craving attention, praise, sympathy and love. But thats the only path to a better, healthier and sustainable society. No Free Lunch.
When you look at Nature do you start asking why do we "need" blue whales or redwood trees? No one "needs" them but they emerge anyhow.
We chimps (mysteriously) love to believe we are in control of nature and what emerges out of it. And time and again the universe takes a gigantic shit on that belief. See Theory of Bounded Rationality/Illusion of Control or read Jurassic Park.
Its also why we see monopolies emerge in every sector of the Economy inspite of all kinds of speech making, laws and govt depts to "control" things.
If you go look at the Annual Report of your favorite monopoly, you will find hundreds if not thousands of subsidiaries/factories/offices around the planet to manage their empire. No External Auditor visits each of those sites cause its just not possible within a reporting period. So every report has a large warning - hey man this our best guess about whats going on in the 10% of the sites we had time to visit - don't sue us.
Don't fall for the notion that people have perfect control over complex ever changing systems. It will just lead to misunderstandings and confusion.
The goals and intent driving these processes wasn't all noble, but the end result wasn't too bad either. Its natural once you rebuild and reshape a Germany or Japan(basically a feudal society pre-WW2), to think well maybe it can be pulled off elsewhere.
But replicating those stories elsewhere was just too complicated to pull off. It required huge resource commitments and totally compliant local governments. Lot of luck basically. That wasn't a problem in the immediate aftermath of WW2, but got more and more complex as time passed. And American financial (dollar hegemony) and corporate interests took over. Cause their goals are simple.
Ofcourse Chomsky is right to point out all the hubris and hypocrisy, but pointing out hypocrisy even stand up comedians are capable of doing. Doing something about hypocrisy is a much more complicated story.
Does Bluesky change this dynamic?
We already had the Free Banking Era where individual Banks issued their own coin. It made the financial system extremely chaotic and unstable. There was constant fluctuations in currency, bank failures, panics etc. And as the economy gets more and more complex and interconnected with other economies, an unstable financial system is non optional. Throw in wars, pandemics, natural disasters, famine etc and things get even more insane. This is why defi/crypto is doomed to follow the same path as the chartered banks of the Free Banking Era.
And Pedagogy is all about getting the student into constant practice rituals until they have mastered the subject. Without practice there is no education/learning.
Herbert Simon - "Criticism of practice called "drill and kill" is very common. Nothing flies more in the face of the last 20 years of research than the assertion that practice is bad. All evidence, from the laboratory and from extensive case studies of professionals, indicates that real competence only comes with extensive practice. In denying the critical role of practice one is denying children the very thing they need to achieve real competence. The instructional task is not to "kill" motivation by demanding drill, but to find tasks that provide practice while at the same time sustaining interest"
It hasn't suddenly begun in 2024, and institutions have lasted those hundreds of years, while being under constant assault by one mindlessly ambitious resourceful group after another.
Blindly pick any institution you want, and go look at their history. In fact, most would have been set up in reaction to some groups delusional activities. Its hard to find a single institution that some group hasn't tried to shutdown, control or exploit.
Institutions survive for the simple reason, that these groups don't have solutions for everything that happens in a complex ever changing universe.
And sooner or later the universe will throw some complex problem in their lap, that breaks whatever mental model of reality, their 3 inch chimp brain can hold. Such people and groups come and go all the time.
The whole machinery, thanks to the amount of cash pouring in, has gone off the rails in terms of, no limit exploitation of people's fears. Shows what power the media as a whole has on people's well being.
This year we also had the EU, Indian, UK and French elections and the total cost was less than 2 Billion.
So the big underlying question is what are Americans even getting out of all that spending? Better quality journos? Better quality politicians? Or just better spin doctors, consultants, fund raisers, talking heads?