Sixian

The value of objects is not objective—it’s subjective. And that subjective value is determined mimetically, based on our relationships with others. We could say that value is intersubjective: we assign value to things (and therefore desire them) according to what other people want.

To paraphrase René Girard: we set out in search of the one thing we think we truly want, which we believe must be hidden under the one rock that is too heavy for us to lift. If we get something that we wanted, we believe we must have wanted the wrong thing. We go in search of a new model.

Founders overestimate the point of diminishing returns for data in their own market category. The asymptote is usually not that high — perhaps thousands or even hundreds of data points are often enough to get 90% of the product experience value.

In a 1970 interview, Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed this situation and described what it might do to our minds: “We live in post-history in the sense that all pasts that ever were are now present to our consciousness and all futures that will be are here now. In that sense, we are post-history and timeless. Instant awareness of the varieties of... See more

To have deep knowledge about something is to have a rich inner world built around that subject’s orbit. How, then, does knowledge come to exist in the world beyond an individual’s private mind?

The sweet spot is probably some sort of middle-class position, with relatively secure and easy kind of work. Like say being a government employee in a sleepy department, or a tenured professor. You’re not so far ahead that you have to work harder than average to generate the collective slipstream potential, but you’re not so far back that all the... See more

So, the model of the major labels certainly has changed, but by the way, after 15 years of decline and pressure, we are now in a world where the major labels continue to be the dominant players in the market and so, a good question is why is that? What is their value today to the consumer and to the artist? Democratization of music has done some... See more