Sarah Drinkwater
@sarahdrinkwater
Knowledge beachcomber interested in the ownership economy, flourishing communities, ecosystem building, magic, and knowledge as an end to itself.
Sarah Drinkwater
Since last summer, a start-up in beta mode has been soliciting volunteers to take part in 55-minute sessions called “gathers,” where strangers discuss their deepest hopes and fears. The fledgling company, Peoplehood, is led by the entrepreneurs Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, who combined sweat and spirituality in their last venture, the high-end... See more
New York Times • SoulCycle Without the Bike: Here Comes Peoplehood
Somewhat to my surprise, I found an answer waiting.I want to follow people who are interesting to me, in a way that’s simple, expressive, and predictable.
Robin Sloan • Specifying Spring '83
late stage capitalism and shifting culture
In America, our culture has become anticipation.
At some point, there was a switch, in which we became an edging culture. One rooted in “pre-”.
With AI, I suspect we’ll be able to play with the compression of anticipation with software objects well. Teasing an idea on Twitter, seeing it’s response, putting that prompt in AI to generate just enough code for the resemblance of the thing → and that reaching consumer hands much faster.
Perhaps anticipation culture is the wedded partner of instant-gratification culture. It’s the only thing that allows us to microdose the gratification of the object before we actually have it. Constantly watching trailers, or runway shows, sneak peaks, etc
I find this all lines up incredibly well to VC culture. The discussion is 90% weighted on the raise
The anticipation is lost as its material reality fails to hold any long term attention. Even if it was the exact promise. We simply love the build up. The image of the thing.
The “pre-”, other than consuming behind the scenes content of an artist’s process, is all mental. As I participate as a dancer in the audience, I can only (if I care to) construct fiction of the worked anticipation of the overall performance. But 90%+ of the audience only cares about the anticipation of the next drop or track. The loop is built in.
To bring it all the way back to the tweet that launched this post. Anticipation is exhausting. It is built around uncertainty, and the quelling of said uncertainty by the fragments of the objects chosen to be presented.
Advertising has successfully used these strategies to accelerate identity formation/dissolution and, by extension, consumer capitalism. There is no reason that radical groups could not use similar methods to challenge capitalism and develop alternative collective identities.
Jonah Peretti • Negations: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
art and commerce and