As a general rule of human civilization, we’ve lived where we work. More than 90 percent of Americans drive to work, and their average commute is about 27 minutes. This tether between home and office is the basis of urban economics. But remote work weakens it; in many cases, it severs the link entirely, replacing spatial proximity with cloud-based ... See more
Similarly, signaling pre and post-internet evolves too. Pre-internet signaling was all about IRL flashiness (a Louis Vuitton bag) while post-internet signaling is about digitally-native flashiness (a Cryptopunk NFT).
Instead of selling their time in the form of a single SKU, they’re productized and diversified. They record videos, and they do paid fan shoutouts, and they sell merchandise—or they write an email newsletter, and they do consulting, and they run an online course.
In retrospect, this is an obvious extension of the social Internet. Social networks made social capital -- that is, popularity and influence -- scalable and quantifiable. We went from vaguely knowing who were the most admired kids in school to knowing who exactly are the most admired people in the world. In doing so, social media commercialized the... See more