María Albert

Questions

If you stare at this graphic for a moment, you’ll note a few things: Everything on the left is real/offline. Whereas everything on the right is virtual and online. This is, of course, because what is real/offline tends to take more intent and longer engagement, since you have to physically go somewhere. But it also means it’s very convenient to exist in the digital world. Moments are measured in seconds not days/years. In slow/traditional culture, where everything on the left takes years to produce, and often hours to consume. And of course, this also restricts the supply and thus there’s a smaller supply of books than, say, articles, and then even fewer than of tweets. So we have more, but they are fleeting. This is hitting everything hard. If software is eating the world, then of course the ability to instantly satisfy people is pushing into every part of their experience. The above lists sports, video, communication, and relationships — but we could say the same about shopping, travel, work, and every other aspect of life is also becoming more instant, more convenient, but also more ephemeral. You could look at this chart and it’s a bit of a Rorschach Test on how you feel about the conversion of IRL/slow experiences into digital/interactive moments. The term “Dopamine Culture” is sort of negative in that it implies that we’re hacking our own biological systems, but let me actually argue the opposite. This is instead, a result of everything… … becoming more accessible and universal. Everyone (poor or rich, educated or uneducated) has a smart phone, and we are giving people much more choice. … having endless variety. Many of the items in the chart above historically were controlled by central gatekeepers, be it news publishers, movie studios, telecom companies, or otherwise. Now it’s much more democratic, which lets people consume what they want — which means more niche and long tail interests. We can produce a lot more, because it’s cheaper to produce. … being consumed on new channels/devices/etc. Instead of needing to go to a movie theater or a museum to consume movies or art, we can do it on our handheld, mobile supercomputers. Whereas before we would have waited in line or sat on our toilets and stared at the ceiling in boredom, we can consume what we want — and sometimes those are long-form Substacks or audiobooks or they might be short form videos. OK, more often videos and feeds than books, I admit.

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