Culture

The Transformation Conundrum

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Not a week goes by where there’s not some question of why a big company/author/etc. doesn’t do something innovative and transformative.  Usually, it’s Disney, at least as of late, but I’ve been seeing this question for years.

Why doesn’t this big company/important person who could genuinely engineer culture do so for good?

Sure we’ve seen some good, along with a lot of evil from media companies.  But they’re in a prime position to change the world for the better, and they don’t!  That’s because sometimes being big and powerful is the very thing that keeps you from changing.

Giant organizations depend on many, many things – cash flow, supply chains, media deals, etc.  Just keeping something like that running takes a lot of effort, but it also means that such organizations are risk-averse.  When your entire giant communications colossus is a huge juggling act, the first thing to do is not drop any balls.

Changing the world means not just risking dropping the balls but throwing them.

Large organizations are also distributed.  They’ve got multiple physical footprints, studios, deals, and clients.  Distribution of resources is often a key to security and stability but may also make you vulnerable due to various dependencies.  It’s hard to change the world when your world is so complex.

Stability can be stagnation.

Finally, imagine if a big media company decided to change the world and engineer a better culture – they’d probably have to work at their own destruction.  Large, monolithic organizations with a lot of power controlling culture aren’t good for long-term social and cultural health.  If they truly innovated and improved culture, the stockholders, board members, etc. might not go for the results.

Honestly, except for one or two Big Media Companies, we may be doing better than we could be due to constant activism, pushing, and some well-meaning people.

If you wonder what kind of media company landscape I’d want to see, I’d probably say “distributed network.”  Many media organizations (sometimes cooperating) and multiple distribution systems (sometimes cooperating) to allow for innovation and opportunity.  Such “best-sized” organizations could survive and prosper, but neither could seize control of too much, and the loss of one will see it replaced in time.

Perhaps someday. Until then, don’t let up on them.

Steven Savage

The Tower of Babbling

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

The Attention Economy is everywhere. Hits on social media sell ad space. Pundits make stupid statements to get hits and rile voters. Everything is about getting us to look, click, and of course, serve up a few ads or maybe get a donation or sale out of us. The Attention Economy’s architects built it to use us, not serve us.

The result is a pile of data analysis, affiliated companies, shadowy agreements, and optimization. This Rube Goldberg device of attention extraction serves those wanting to make even more money and the few who can get in on the deal. It’s a meaningless edifice for most of us. There’s no there there, just people selling things through ads or wanting to get us to vote in anger.

The pinnacle of this is NFTS, where people burn up the planet to tag ugly art as theirs in what is obviousy a scam and money laundering scheme. There’s no meaning, just people insisting there is until the game of musical chairs catches fires.

Lately, I’ve been digging through old indie radio shows, some going back to the ’80s. There’s music I’ve never heard before and will likely never hear since. There’s witty commentary on the time that’s only more poignant. It’s all so personal, so real, so meaningful to the people at the time – listening to these shows, I felt the enthusiasm so strongly, an enthusiasm I missed.

That enthusiasm, that meaning came from the strong personal feel of the indie music, the skits, and the host’s passion. That connection is too rare in the attention economy. It’s hard to love something when you have to pander to the algorithm, jump on the latest trend, or spew the latest jargon just to get seen. You have to be meaningless to get the attention for things with meaning, and it’s maddening.

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve found myself engaging in what’s meaningful to me. Joining activist groups that do things. Engaging with meditative practice more strongly to understand myself. Working on a job that lets me actually do good things. I think this focus wasn’t just due to the pandemic itself, but necessary to keep myself together in the mess of the Attention Economy.

Many of us hope to slow, dissemble, or change the bizarre media mess we’re dealing with. I have some hope for regulation and great hope for engaged citizens. But one thing I can say is we need to focus on ourselves and find what we care about first. That gives you the grounding you need to do the right things – and not get swept away in the latest mathematically calculated fad or outrage.

I want to be as deep into something real as old radio show hosts were into psychobilly from Arkansas or early techno.  Maybe by being better grounded, I can help others find meaning as well.

Steven Savage

Run Deep Not Shallow

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

My friend Serdar tweeted thusly:

“speculation: nostalgia for 8/16-bit gaming / computing is nostalgia for an era of dedicated devices and focused time, an era when you could sit down to write or play sth and not have 200 tabs assault you sidelong”

As I retrogame, I had to think this statement over. I came away with the conclusion Serdar wasn’t right in the whole, because there are many reasons. But he was right in the small as, on review, I saw this in myself and others.

Echoing memories of a simpler time.

This reminded me of an exercise I had done to evaluate my life and career. Often replaying my choices, I took a walk for an hour and worked backward through my life, looking at my major life choices. I had many deep insights during my stroll, but at times I remembered life before internet-driven complications.

How much of my time today was really mine?

I finally found a way to express this when I discussed social media with a communication professional. They noted the research required to go into a good strategy these days and how easy it was to be distracted. I summed up their conversation as “what are the deep patterns?” that mattered to what they had to say.

We are distracted by so much that professionals have to keep developing counter-distraction approaches.

Thus we come full circle to what stuck in my head due to Serdar’s Tweet. So much of today’s mega media always-online culture of constant chatter was a distraction from “deep patterns” of life. Like powerful currents running beneath a body of water, those are important, not the sparkly ever-changing reflections on the surface.

The deep patterns, the powerful currents we need to navigate, steer, and control, are easy to miss in an age of 200 tabs and constant scandal-chat. It often feels like there’s more of everything, but what matters is a shrinking percentage of the whole vying for our attention.

How many times have you wanted to scream but does any of this matter?  Admit it, it’s a non-zero number.

For me, I’m glad I have experience and interest in meditation, philosophy, and psychology. Some Taoist abdominal breathing or pithy Buddhist quotes help bring me enough awareness of the distractions I face. But sometimes, it’d be nice to just not have 200 tabs, ten text messages, and email piling up.

It’d be nice to just focus on a good game.

Steven Savage