Sixian

“The infoverse may be infinite, but our allotment of days is not.” We ought to be conscious of how far and how quickly we move through the internet. But without a physical way to observe our time spent online, we risk scrolling, skimming, and hyperlinking ourselves to oblivion.

The idea that we are living in a “dangerously sped-up culture” only fuels the desire to outsource undesirable tasks (perceived as “non-time”) to others.

And even when we’re not being provoked, it still matters. We can choose not to respond in kind to the nonchalance and laziness that surrounds us—the mediocrity that cries out for transcendence, but which is all too easy to placate with little effort.

Sharma argues that the contemporary relationship to time is characterized by “the looming expectation that everyone must become an entrepreneur of time control.” Each of us must “recalibrate” to temporal expectations that vary widely along lines of power and privilege.

Transparency Creates A Steep Power Law James: And so we’re back to the power-law problem. Which is that some people are very charismatic and other people just aren’t. Some people are really fast, and smart, and interesting to listen to and some people aren’t... And these attention systems we have today — and this identity of the individual with the... See more

“People are good at learning by imitation,” Housel notes. “But the hidden nature of wealth makes it hard to imitate others and learn from their ways.” We can’t imitate many of the actions that lead to wealth because the most important action that leads to wealth—not spending every dollar we make—is an anti-action. Wealth comes, in part, from the... See more

Here’s the big change we all need to understand. The network itself is now the means of value creation, and thus wealth creation. Wealth, wisdom, power, and status all flow on the network...the big picture is that we can see each other and communicate about most things instantly and for zero marginal cost.

The best we can do is attempt to share the collective knowledge of today in ways that feel honest, generous, and timeless. We need to retain something of the personal, of the human—of the original private triumph of failure.