Personality-driven egocracy is the natural result of the repackaging of politics as a pure entertainment product, as described in Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
For an example of how an attention-optimizer at the other end of the moral character spectrum from Trump can gain power, consider Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who literally got elected president out of nowhere by playing a guy who gets elected president out of nowhere on TV. If we are doomed to be dominated by attention-optimizers in this generation, we might do well to think about what mechanisms could favor Zelenskyy types over Trump types.
Nice work. As a newcomer here I’m glad to witness an at-bat like this; in baseball it looks like a solo shot over the top deck in dead-center. Haven’t read anything that traces the evolution from Burnham’s concept to now so convincingly, but that does seem to nail it.
I'd say that attention is zero-sum in a way that capital equipment and human capital are not. Land is also zero-sum, but monopolizing attention is a different sort of thing and not so easily monopolized as land, especially as new media lose their luster. Also, per the Green argument above, media decentralization encourages a recklessness, both in the early printing press and present era, that make influencer leaders a high variance bet at best.
Influencers may well be a new elite class, supplanting some of the role of both religious leaders and organization stalwarts. Similarly, we are seeing a return to patronage systems led by personalistic leaders and influencers can play that game well. But I think the scale will not match that of the mandarins as they must ultimately shove one another aside and not stand on one anothers' shoulders.
Personality-driven egocracy is the natural result of the repackaging of politics as a pure entertainment product, as described in Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
For an example of how an attention-optimizer at the other end of the moral character spectrum from Trump can gain power, consider Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who literally got elected president out of nowhere by playing a guy who gets elected president out of nowhere on TV. If we are doomed to be dominated by attention-optimizers in this generation, we might do well to think about what mechanisms could favor Zelenskyy types over Trump types.
Nice work. As a newcomer here I’m glad to witness an at-bat like this; in baseball it looks like a solo shot over the top deck in dead-center. Haven’t read anything that traces the evolution from Burnham’s concept to now so convincingly, but that does seem to nail it.
I'm more convinced by the Hank Green argument that this is first and foremost a media revolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8PndpFPL8g
I'd say that attention is zero-sum in a way that capital equipment and human capital are not. Land is also zero-sum, but monopolizing attention is a different sort of thing and not so easily monopolized as land, especially as new media lose their luster. Also, per the Green argument above, media decentralization encourages a recklessness, both in the early printing press and present era, that make influencer leaders a high variance bet at best.
Influencers may well be a new elite class, supplanting some of the role of both religious leaders and organization stalwarts. Similarly, we are seeing a return to patronage systems led by personalistic leaders and influencers can play that game well. But I think the scale will not match that of the mandarins as they must ultimately shove one another aside and not stand on one anothers' shoulders.
I found all this rather depressing, Noah. Well argued, but depressing.