I have very little belief that any of the major tech billionaires were Sci-fi “readers”. All were brought up rich and maintained their wealth by failing upwards in an industry that basically threw money at aristocratic families and their offspring. All the sci-fi from prolific figures specifically target those groups as the reason for societies hardships. Herbert, Asimov, Heinlein, etc. all have major works which denounce the inherent vileness of those classes that rule from privileged positions without merit. If they did read any of those most influential books of the genre they definitely took the wrong messages from them. More likely than not, they probably only paid attention to the hypothetical technology in those universes to copy to theur model for “their” ideas, rather than paying any attention to the moral messages usually described about the use of the technology… Which usually ends up fucking the people who use it. Musk driving for human computer integration chips with reckless abandon tells me he has not read any sci-fi which would help him understand the possible hiccups he’s going to run into. I also doubt his endeavour is anything more than a stunt which conflates the use cases of the technology which is probably just revamped HCI technology that already exists to transmit motor cortex impulses to areas of the body that have been damaged due to injury. (I work in neuromodulation research) Even if they read the best scifi now, they would probably take away the wrong messages from them, the lens that you bring to a reading changes how you view it. As a billionaire, they just lack the ability to ground themselves enough to understand the social cautionary messages.
Tech billionaires: I’m going to live forever so I have to figure out how to get all the money in the world for myself by taking it away from everyone else. Me, me, me, I, myself, me, I, me, myself, me and not you
A lot of the sci-fi of the era was based off of the assumption that corporate power would rise to rival that of governments. That runaway capitalism would birth “high-tech low-life” as the state of society at large. Yes, the stars are aligning between the interests of the powerful in the present, and the future postulated in those stories; those stories were made on the basis of human nature and self-reflections on the contemporary. They are being proven right because they assumed plausible futures with likely outcomes. Want a solar punk world? We have to buck the trend and disrupt the trajectory we’re on now. Will we have pivotal moment like that of Americana circa 1929, or slide further in a hellscape? I know what future I want but I don’t know if we’re going to get it.
Read Asimov’s Robots series. !Stop at Asimov’s Robots series! I want Daneel damn it! We could use a Demerzel but not the rest of Foundation or the Galactic authoritarian nonsense.
While the business has reckoned with more seismic deals in recent years, among them Disney-Fox and AT&T-Time Warner, this time the reality seems to be dawning that bigger is not always better. Streaming platforms swim in red ink and legacy media assets (mainly linear TV) are eroding. Yes, Zaslav has hinted at opportunities to be had, but WBD was not really considered a buyer given its oft-stated focus on reducing its enormous debt. It’s not clear how trying to swallow a company with hefty debt of its own solves any problems.
Before I say anything, I am against the merger. However as far as streaming goes, having a monopoly on content makes a streaming platform inherently better. WBD isn’t betting on being the most successful streaming platform, it’s betting on every other streaming platform that can’t compete with Zaslav buying everything.
The best tv and movie streaming platform in history, Netflix circa mid-2010s, had no monopoly on content whatsoever. All these studios trying to monopolize their content onto their own streaming services has only made streaming worse.
Absolutely. I wasn’t saying Netflix was at any point morally right, and the rise of the Netflix original was definitely part of the beginning of the end of paid legal streaming being a good experience for the viewer.
the only streamers were Netflix and Hulu? When anything you wanted to stream was on one or the other? Otherwise known as a duopoly. It’s like how the PC gaming marketplace was objectively at it’s best when Steam had a monopoly on selling games. Having everything in one place is better.
Streaming will get better, everything else will get worse as the monopolies get to full power again.
Netflix had a near monopoly on the streaming but not on the actual shows and movies. All the studios still owned their shows and movies and could unilaterally pull them off Netflix and make their own services, evidenced by the fact that that’s exactly what they did. Importantly, the monopoly was not vertically integrated. Similarly, Valve makes very few of the games available on Steam.
Streaming will not get better as the studios fully monopolize it. Not without at the very least and most liberal an enforced ban on vertical integration in visual media and on exclusive licensing agreements. That won’t happen under capitalism though, so the only real improvement will be in the resurgence of piracy.
So we are heading toward three streaming channels, basically cbs, nbc, abc, but instead of OTA and free with ads, it will be 20/month each with ads. All the utter crap on cable nobody wanted to watch, (100 channels with nothing on) will instead be ready to stream on demand. Well done shitty end stage capitalism, well done.
The current head of the FTC is bringing the first anti-trust case in many years. She’s launched cases against Google, and Amazon so far, and is investigating Facebook. That gives me some hope.
Such a deal would likely attract less regulatory scrutiny than other potential mergers, with WBD lacking any domestic broadcast network, and with mostly synergistic businesses. The biggest source of friction would likely be combining the two legacy film and TV studios.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Fediverse moves forward without direct monetization.
We’ve seen Usenet become more of a niche platform because it’s hard to monetize. Meanwhile, the popular social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) are dripping in ads, which make it easier for them to build and maintain developer teams.
I want the Fediverse to succeed, but I have a hard time seeing how it can compete for average users without paid developer hours.
The development of New Exciting Features™ will probably be slower on nonprofit systems, but the enormous costs of moderation will be effectively zero, while simultaneously improving in quality. My prediction for what we’ll eventually see is “fun” ad-supported commercial platforms (assuming they can afford moderation), and a somewhat more “serious” discussion-based Fediverse.
“Basically, we’re in the process of replacing our whole social back-end with ActivityPub,” says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. “I think Flipboard is going to be the first mainstream consumer service that existed in a walled garden that switches over to ActivityPub.”
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