And -- thanks to Inception, I can now cite a famous person saying something I was going to say anyway, (which means it's not plagiarism) -- just like a dream, we can't really remember how we became The Market Age, or where it's going, or the big one, what it all means.
Unless of course, you talk to me, a skilled analyst, objective provocateur, and master of synthesizing disparate sources into something of a massively mosaic Chuck Close-like Self-portrait. Notice the capital S. That means it's not reflexive, it's adflexive. As in, it doesn't refer to Chuck, it refers to the ideal. Also "ads." I know I shouldn't have to spell that out, but it's necessary if I'm to make sure everybody's on the same page.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: The Market Age is something of the next phase in the evolution of conspicuous consumption and gilded exteriors. Except, whereas the Gilded Ones displayed it through ostentatious cars and houses, the Marketed Ones display it through an understanding of the human psyche and a highly cultivated public image.
So, first: How does this behavior equate to conspicuous consumption?
So, first: How does this behavior equate to conspicuous consumption?
Well, technically it doesn't. Unless you consider things like getting one or multiple degrees that allow you to study things like computer science & behavioral economics while developing a vast network of highly influential people, as well as having the technical training that allows you to put everything into action, to be forms of consumption. Which they are. Because there is a product, and it is being consumed. It's just, instead of houses and cars, the product is education, the service-based economy, digital marketplaces, social influence. Those lucky few who happen to wield such things can be said to possess a certain hegemony - although I hesitate to call it that because we're not quite far enough along to be able to see the landscape with sufficiently historical lenses.
We can see, however, that The Market Age is yet another age of explosive success. It's basically a digital gold rush. There's even a boom valley. The good news is it's apparently learned from the Dot Com bubble and has implemented something of an artificial system of Darwinian selection and autonomous development to make sure things don't run dry quite so quickly. I'm still learning about this myself, but it seems to me that the software developers have caught up to the hardware manufacturers in terms of incorporating obsolescence into their products, primarily out of a basic need to just keep making stuff. There's also a desperate need for regulation which so far has been resolved by the amoebic mass of the Internet just... gloobing around and continuing to do what it's always done: whatever it wanted.
But again, the conspicuous consumption indictment dictates that I provide examples, so let me ask you this: How many iPhones have you owned? MacBooks? iPods? iPads? And then how many times have the apps and operating systems "rebranded" or updated to take advantage of the new advances in hardware? How many times have you downloaded something that everybody was doing (Words With Friends anyone?) only to completely forget about it by the next press cycle? "Oh, but how does updating software contribute to consumption?" Because with each marginal upgrade in computing power, the software engineers match it with an equally marginal upgrade in... glitz and skeuomorphism and "functionality" and "trend-i-ness," meaning of course that the hardware upgrade has effectively been negated. My fully up-to-date MacBook Pro, mid-2010, now runs about as fast as a long-since-updated Black MacBook, mid-2007. Care to explain people?
Basically it boils down to this: Designers and Developers - congratulations. For as long as there's Internet, you've entered the realm of bankers, doctors, and lawyers as indispensable private sector job functions. Good thing you're also EXTREMELY inexpensive as far as labor goes. And you're really open source with what your trends are, which makes it easy for someone just entering the field to catch up and sound fluent. Part of the tradeoff of being the most visually-based of the essential job functions I'd think. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, all I'm saying is that supply and demand are pretty equilibrial at the moment, and I suspect it has something to do with your naturally extroverted selves suddenly taking center-stage and loving the spotlight.
Which leads me to my next point: Gilded Exteriors.
To begin, The Market Age is also the age of acquisitions, of shifting from consultant to in-house, in-house to consultant. The turnover rate for successful tech-based companies is just insane. I don't have any numbers for this yet, so you -- yeah. You. Intern. Go find me numbers on how many tech startups have been built and sold from the year 2001 to today. I'm expecting trillions of dollars, thousands of startups. I don't need it now, I'm just going to make my point anyway, but I want to make sure I've got my numbers right in case somebody jumps my case about a minor detail -- might have to take this with a grain of salt, but I'd be willing to bet that just about all of the startups built and bought over the past thirteen years are no longer run by the people who built them, and are owned by maybe one of six major conglomerates (Apple, Google, Oracle, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft would be my guess. Oh, also Facebook and all its ilk.)
To begin, The Market Age is also the age of acquisitions, of shifting from consultant to in-house, in-house to consultant. The turnover rate for successful tech-based companies is just insane. I don't have any numbers for this yet, so you -- yeah. You. Intern. Go find me numbers on how many tech startups have been built and sold from the year 2001 to today. I'm expecting trillions of dollars, thousands of startups. I don't need it now, I'm just going to make my point anyway, but I want to make sure I've got my numbers right in case somebody jumps my case about a minor detail -- might have to take this with a grain of salt, but I'd be willing to bet that just about all of the startups built and bought over the past thirteen years are no longer run by the people who built them, and are owned by maybe one of six major conglomerates (Apple, Google, Oracle, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft would be my guess. Oh, also Facebook and all its ilk.)
In other words, there are a ton of adopted children out there, and the conglomerates are the orphanage. The personal brand lasts only insofar as it remains a valuable marketing tool for gaining the attention of a bigger brand that wants either to buy you or catapult you into national attention, at which point you're still you, yeah, but you're You+, as in You+Yahoo (did "Marissa Mayer" ring any bells before she took Yahoo and CEO to her name?).
As for how this pertains to me: After my first post, "Brunching in The Market Age," and the extent to which it dealt with personal branding, I can confidently set your fears at ease by saying: Yes. I am preparing myself for acquisition. I'm buttoning my collar, whipping my skinny into a Double Windsor (silver clip above the third button), ripping off the sleeves, and flexing my guns. You like that? Yeah. Oh yeah. I do bodyweight you know. Also a distance runner. Lets me keep lean. But I can still do this...
Except that's not me, that's a hologram. People are so fascinated with 3D technology and holograms. Just: Okay look - every social media celebrity you know of is, truly, little more than a projection. These holograms, these images with personalities: They. Are. Sculpted. They're like Chia Pets before we realized we could eat the seeds. They grow and they wilt, they're adorable, they're ludicrous, they become passé. Their operators identified the aspects within themselves that were most pleasing to a public audience, and then just became those things. It's like Tony Stark stepping into the Iron Man suit except, for us commoners, once we're in the suit, we can't step out of it. That's just our "brand."
It's at this point that The Market Age faces, at last, the exact same dilemma that has plagued humankind for millennia: Does it continue along the path it envisioned (in this case, cultivated self-awareness), or does it recognize that it will, some day, have to step aside for whatever comes next? Because if there's one thing marketing has always told us, it's that everything has an expiration date. (Did marketing say that, or did something else?) These words aren't the words of a Luddite, someone who wants to dismantle this enormous machine; these are the words of someone who has spent his life studying the patterns of Time, and sees that certain things are bound to happen, in more or less variable degrees. (You see, I say Time, others say History. Same thing in this case.)
What came before must, at some point, yield to what comes after, otherwise it becomes a monarchy. And if it becomes a monarchy, it becomes based on lineage. And if the lineage is threatened or disputed: Tyranny and Violent Revolution. (Come on people, this is the kind of stuff our Founding Fathers understood).
If The Market Age continues as it has been? Well, privacy would be my first, biggest concern. And I don't just mean "keeping things private." I mean very much what Virginia Woolf meant in A Room of One's Own. If our creative minds are to remain creative, they will require privacy. They will require freedom from the necessities of "image" or "public opinion." They will require the ability to disappear.
They will also require the ability to change. Public Opinion is notoriously belligerent toward mutability. Remember Quickster? Take away their candy and they pitch a fit. Offer them new candy because you're trying to move on? NO.
NO. NO. NO. I like the OLD candy. I don't WANT new candy. I like the OLD candy. Why can't you just give me what I WANT?
Frankly, if Netflix had continued on with Quickster, it probably would've tanked. But, more likely, it would've held on at a much diminished, but eventually stable size as people realized that "Hey... You know, we really do stream waaayy more stuff than we watch on disk. What if Quickster is just a way to compartmentalize resources so that Netflix-proper can focus on getting more content online sooner after it's released?" And I say that after just yesterday canceling my disk subscription. Because you know why? Because: Megashare.info. That's why.
The point is this:
The Market Age is the age in which "branding" has superseded "the Self" but with only mild or opportunistic attention to the necessity for change or movement. It has built its foundation on a whirlpool of shifting sands because it hopes there's a giant library buried deep in the dune which can then prop it up before the storm gets to be too much worse.
There's an even simpler explanation: When your industry is based on the study and utility of self-awareness, it stimulates an inherent desire within the observed to subvert the attention it receives. In mythological terms: You have invoked Chaos, The Usurer, as your muse, and with every gift bestowed, a double-price is paid.
Maybe all the marketers should just get together with all the quantum physicists: see who can sell their ideas first...
As for how this pertains to me: After my first post, "Brunching in The Market Age," and the extent to which it dealt with personal branding, I can confidently set your fears at ease by saying: Yes. I am preparing myself for acquisition. I'm buttoning my collar, whipping my skinny into a Double Windsor (silver clip above the third button), ripping off the sleeves, and flexing my guns. You like that? Yeah. Oh yeah. I do bodyweight you know. Also a distance runner. Lets me keep lean. But I can still do this...
Except that's not me, that's a hologram. People are so fascinated with 3D technology and holograms. Just: Okay look - every social media celebrity you know of is, truly, little more than a projection. These holograms, these images with personalities: They. Are. Sculpted. They're like Chia Pets before we realized we could eat the seeds. They grow and they wilt, they're adorable, they're ludicrous, they become passé. Their operators identified the aspects within themselves that were most pleasing to a public audience, and then just became those things. It's like Tony Stark stepping into the Iron Man suit except, for us commoners, once we're in the suit, we can't step out of it. That's just our "brand."
It's at this point that The Market Age faces, at last, the exact same dilemma that has plagued humankind for millennia: Does it continue along the path it envisioned (in this case, cultivated self-awareness), or does it recognize that it will, some day, have to step aside for whatever comes next? Because if there's one thing marketing has always told us, it's that everything has an expiration date. (Did marketing say that, or did something else?) These words aren't the words of a Luddite, someone who wants to dismantle this enormous machine; these are the words of someone who has spent his life studying the patterns of Time, and sees that certain things are bound to happen, in more or less variable degrees. (You see, I say Time, others say History. Same thing in this case.)
What came before must, at some point, yield to what comes after, otherwise it becomes a monarchy. And if it becomes a monarchy, it becomes based on lineage. And if the lineage is threatened or disputed: Tyranny and Violent Revolution. (Come on people, this is the kind of stuff our Founding Fathers understood).
If The Market Age continues as it has been? Well, privacy would be my first, biggest concern. And I don't just mean "keeping things private." I mean very much what Virginia Woolf meant in A Room of One's Own. If our creative minds are to remain creative, they will require privacy. They will require freedom from the necessities of "image" or "public opinion." They will require the ability to disappear.
They will also require the ability to change. Public Opinion is notoriously belligerent toward mutability. Remember Quickster? Take away their candy and they pitch a fit. Offer them new candy because you're trying to move on? NO.
NO. NO. NO. I like the OLD candy. I don't WANT new candy. I like the OLD candy. Why can't you just give me what I WANT?
Frankly, if Netflix had continued on with Quickster, it probably would've tanked. But, more likely, it would've held on at a much diminished, but eventually stable size as people realized that "Hey... You know, we really do stream waaayy more stuff than we watch on disk. What if Quickster is just a way to compartmentalize resources so that Netflix-proper can focus on getting more content online sooner after it's released?" And I say that after just yesterday canceling my disk subscription. Because you know why? Because: Megashare.info. That's why.
The point is this:
The Market Age is the age in which "branding" has superseded "the Self" but with only mild or opportunistic attention to the necessity for change or movement. It has built its foundation on a whirlpool of shifting sands because it hopes there's a giant library buried deep in the dune which can then prop it up before the storm gets to be too much worse.
There's an even simpler explanation: When your industry is based on the study and utility of self-awareness, it stimulates an inherent desire within the observed to subvert the attention it receives. In mythological terms: You have invoked Chaos, The Usurer, as your muse, and with every gift bestowed, a double-price is paid.
Maybe all the marketers should just get together with all the quantum physicists: see who can sell their ideas first...
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