Greenwald's new media company

[AdamSmith]

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/glenn-greenwalds-new-media-company-is-a-bespoke-firm/282546/

[Guest hitoallusa]

I believe that this company will not be so much different from other media companies. Let's see how it goes. I am interested in its patrons though. What ideas do they have for this company is my question. Anyways, good luck..

[MsGuy]

One of the things I regret is that I won't quite live long enough to greet the Singularity. LOL but then maybe nobody else will either.

====

One can applaud these folks efforts without believing for an instant that human institutions can adapt anywhere near as fast as new technology can be deployed.

And if modern history teaches anything, it's that any technological advance that can be deployed, will be deployed.

[AdamSmith]

A main point I took was that this is a search for new models of how to fund journalism. And in ways that let it remain, as they put it, "independent public service journalism."

[MsGuy]

But note the search for new models of funding is being triggered by a technology driven collapse of the old business models.

And my main point is that, even if any (or all!) of these new models should prove effective, before any of them can gain some traction ever newer technology will have rendered them obsolete. Picture humanity as a hamster on a motorized exercise wheel programmed to turn faster and faster in a logarithmic progression.

[AdamSmith]

But note the search for new models of funding is being triggered by a technology driven collapse of the old business models.

And my main point is that, even if any (or all!) of these new models should prove effective, before any of them can gain some traction ever newer technology will have rendered them obsolete. Picture humanity as a hamster on a motorized exercise wheel programmed to turn faster and faster in a logarithmic progression.

Surely not quite that bad. Each new model need only work long enough to sustain itself until the next new thing.

Ever thus anyway, nein? Imagine the reaction of the scribal monks when they saw what Gutenberg wrought. Or Scroll Manufacturers Local 34 once the spine-bound codex caught on.

Unless you were just making an autological post.

[MsGuy]

Surely not quite that bad. Each new model need only work long enough to sustain itself until the next new thing.

Yeah, but...

Human adaptability is pretty much measured in generations. We're kind of stuck with the mental and social adaptive tools we inherited from our stone chipping ancestors. Our genotype just doesn't change all that fast.

Just for instance, it took until the mid-60's (about a generation) before folks in charge of nukes finally figured out that nukes couldn't be used, not even against the little pesky types who didn't even have them. And it took another whole generation before they figured out that, in many ways, the more of them you had, the less secure you were. Many people still haven't figured that out. (I'm talking hard headed realpolitik logic here, not mushy moral considerations.)

Now the two technological examples you cite allowed folks plenty of time to fiddle around and muddle through until they finally found something that more or less worked. The one I cited, well it was a close run thing whether we would survive long enough to get it right. And as I said before, some of us (PRK, Iran, Pakistan and India (?), & are Japan and Saudi Arabia edging over to get in line?) still haven't quite got it. It's so easy to see how much you gain by having nukes and so hard to understand how much having them constrains your freedom of action.

And now-a-days we are having the social/economic equivalent of nukes popping up every year, it seems. And the pace keeps picking up. It's not just more every year, it's more more every year.

So maybe we'll luck out and hit some kind of technological plateau and have time to catch our breath. Figure things out.

But does anyone really believe we've milked all we are going to from chemistry and physics? And really cybernetics is just starting to come into its own. Biotechnology? Still in its infancy. So no plateau in sight; in fact the tech slope seems to grow steeper and steeper as far out as we care to peer.

It seems to me we're in danger of seeing our best efforts to adapt to new tech being strangled in the crib by even newer, more radical tech that replaces the old tech we're trying so hard to find a way to live with. LOL. and soon enough, aborted before it reaches term.

Picture a bunch of grammar school kids taking batting practice. First they're doing coach pitch, then it's Pony league, then minor league, then major league, then Cy young winners. And while the kids are trying to keep pace with all that, they need to keep in mind that the guy waiting in the bull pen is Cy Young himself, zombiefied up by the miracle of modern bio-tech engineering.

So, in summary, it is that bad and worse, 'cause good enough just won't cut it.

[lookin]

Thought-provoking indeed, MsGuy. But I have to remember that the folks who are dealing with these issues are already a couple of generations ahead of me. And who knows what's in the crib?

[MsGuy]

And who knows what's in the crib?

Probably some big brained cloned clown who will whip up a world killing virus with the biolab play set his parents get him for his tenth birthday.

"Please, Mom, I just gotta have it. I promise I won't make a mess."

[MsGuy]

"The iPotty – a bizarre combination of iPad and potty designed to help young children with potty training – has been named the worst toy of the year by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC)."

Latter day luddites fighting a rear guard action against the coming of the Singularity.

[AdamSmith]

a rear guard action

Don't say I didn't warn you: http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/17245-fart-filtering-underwear/page-4#entry104220