<nettime> cyberdawg ramble

[jon lebkowsky <jonl@io.com>]

cyberdawg ramble

The Internet, like rock 'n roll, is here to stay. Like rock 'n roll, the
Internet has variations, it has glossy mainstream affinity cultures and
dark offstream undercultures, all threaded into a psychic ecology that is a
hologram of human evolution 'til now. The Internet has many meanings and no
meanings. It's got heavy voodoo zen that gives it staying-power weight.
Like all cultures, this cyber one is indifferent to the valences of
reality.  (Cyber is the steersman, and he'll steer you any way you want to
go; he brings no preconceptions to the party.

I don't mean to be opaque, I'm actually here to make a Prediction about our
little corner of rock 'n roll which, while appearing to be colonized by the
mainstream, is colonizing the mainstream with slipstream modes of thinking.

I said it tonight, in a public conversation with David Bennahum: the
Internet "Industry" overlays templates built on assumptions of top-down
hierarchical control structures, but our steersman, the cyberguy, steers a
flat course, not from the top.  Vertical thinking is an outmode.

Those who think they are building a billion dollar industry don't
understand the ground which is their foundation, any more than they
understand their need for oxygen. Their anaerobic economics follow the same
false assumptions as fuels any boomtown ambience.

We are riding for a fall, that's for sure.

So how should you invest? I suggest that you make the simplest investments.
Remember that atmospheres are fragile; don't invest too much in a dubious
future. Invest instead in the here and now, donate smiles to your children,
food to your hungry neighbors. Build systems with integrity. Tell the truth.

Tell. The. Truth.  It's easy to forget how.  First acknowledge that an
investment in cubic feet of air is ephemeral.  Don't invest in meaning,
either: form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

yak yak yak.

hasta


--
jon lebkowsky                    jonl@io.com
www.well.com/~jonl
                                            

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