Starting with Meow & Meow or Mephedrone in 2010 – 2011, moving to the rise and fall of The Silk Road in 2013 – 2015. Who could forget the outrage of silk road! In 2017 like a duplicate of the war on drugs, the Silk road was closed down and the drug dealers hit the underground with 100’s of new online shops on the darknet using reputation systems like ebay. Then in 2018, how do you advertise to new customers? Well you copy what others do, taking advantage of the influence of social media to showcase your wears.
“This is the new public space and the ideal platform for dealers,” says Liz McCulloch, director of policy at Volteface, who curated the study. “They can advertise in really creative ways – pictures, prizes, reaching out to people’s friends, building organic relationships. Among young people, there is a perception that they can ’vet’ them, get a sense of whether they are trustworthy.”
Seeing New year 2020 in from my windows in central Manchester
The 2010’s are over and its now the 2020’s… Happy New Year all…
As we enter the next decade, I’ve been thinking about what things I certainly want to bring forward. At the same time while writing Other things to know about me in my user manual, I used a cluetrain rule number 7.
“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”
― Cluetrain Manifesto
I think quotes are a useful to convey some meaning in to the future. Something which may be useful when looking into the 2020’s.
“Sometimes I forget that my world is not the mainstream (yet)” ― Eric Nehrlich
“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”
“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.”
― Sherry Turkle
“ Sometimes the most modest changes can bring about enormous effects.”
“People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.”
― Malcolm Gladwell
“Do the unexpected. Find the others”
― Timothy Leary
“In the future that the surveillance capitalism prepares for us, my will and yours threaten the flow of surveillance revenues. Its aim is not to destroy us but simply to author us and to profit from that authorship.”
― Shoshana Zuboff
“When you don’t have to ask for permission innovation thrives.”
― Steven Johnson
“Freedom is about stopping the past.”
“If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they’re free for people to build upon as they see fit.”
― Lawrence Lessig
You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
– Steve Jobs
Despite their good intentions, today’s businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives – to do good and make money simultaneously.
– Cindy Gallop
“If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you.”
– Jonathan Zittrain
“By viewing evolution though a strictly competitive lens, we miss the bigger story of our own social development and have trouble understanding humanity as one big, interconnected team.”
― Douglas Rushkoff
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.
– Marshall MuLuhan
All food for thought, and there are so many more I could add…
I can’t believe I forgot my favorite of them all
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete
I just started watching the Boys and I got to say its right on point. This review sums it up.
For me the whole series is a total and effective satire that lets us see what would become of the world if fiction becomes reality: heroes lose interest in saving the world (or take advantage of its status), are forced to do things that are not right, to follow the company’s own interests and do not go out to end the crime if they are not followed by a camera that captures each of their movements, even though they are always transmitting that image of exemplary citizen when in fact they are greedy and treat their fans badly.
It’s also chilling to know that people in power act as judges and executioners to decide what crimes are profitable and what millions of dollars they rent their superheroes to other cities so they can be safe. The precision in the denunciation of The Boys is one of its strongest points since satire towards these characters is not new, but combining it with the theme of corporate America and wild capitalism gives it a clear differential touch.
The series is a total hit and is perfectly developed, to the point of making it impossible to miss because chapter by chapter the anguish increases. So if you have free time, I strongly recommend you to watch this satirical series.
I’d echo the last paragraph, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before. Its a very different show from the Watchmen but full of interesting points on society and couture.
