George Gilder lost a lot of his credibility--a way lot more than he deserved to lose--with some stock market recommendations he made leading into the 2000-01 dot-com stock market bubble burst, most notably MCI WorldCom and Global Crossing. But he was proved right in the long term.
What I am seeing is that while the Left is being rigidly policed by the Omnicause, the Right is desperately in need of some housekeepers willing to excommunicate those beyond the pale and keep up the moral and intellectual hygiene. William F. Buckley did an admirable job of this during his lifetime, most notably with the Birchers but also with the likes of David Duke.
The water's fine in the big right-of-center pool, but we need to prevent people from having accidents in the pool--and the MSM throwing in Baby Ruth bars and calling it yet another turd in the right-wing pool.
The Older Liberal Center seems to be composed mostly of people who jail-broke the Omnicause. Others will follow and may stake out different camps, but I don't think it will be a stampede for the doors. There's too much cause identity still in the Omnicause.
I don't think it's possible to write about new center-left to left media without the G-word, Gaza. Sometimes I think it's overplayed (and I am personally in a pro-Israel media bubble with podcasts I listen to and main newspaper I read), but it has allowed the left to break with the Democratic Party brand and the center in a way that they haven't been able to do on any other issues for a while, and since pro-Palestine stuff is often subject to bans etc and also allows them to pivot themselves against the "mainstream media" as the chief villain similar to how the right wing media apparatus has done this for ages. It is a pattern going back to at least the Iraq War that there has only really been a left "break" from blue "blob" media when it goes along with what the left and especially among young people sees to be a disaster, ie the NYTimes and such covering WMD claims incredulously, this led to rise of original 9/11 Truth movement and conspiracy media which was originally much more left-coded, then the 2009 financial crisis birthed media outlets trying to look at the root causes in a systemic light (Jacobin, even Vox could be seen as a sort of thing that arose basically entirely to explain exactly why Obama couldn't do this that or the other thing on banking and health). More darkly, I think the frisson and edginess of pushing racist etc issues that attracts some to elements of the more unfortunate right also drives at least some of the anti-Zionism of the new left media. "At last, here is a left that can upset blue grand/parents and symbolic stand-ins/establishment types as much as the MAGA/populist right!" One issue that appears to be much worse on the left is how there are few overlapping audience networks between BreadTube type people, podcasts, websites, to form an ecosystem that includes text/twitch streaming/video/podcasts as a daily consumer lifestyle; I get the sense the average viewer of say Hasan Piker's show doesn't read any theoretical or text-based stuff coming from the same viewpoint
One of the biggest power moves you can make is aggressively discussing something that could be major in the future but is currently extremely boring; the reason the 2008 financial crisis came out of nowhere as a mainstream news story wasn't because the likes of the WSJ and FT didn't have articles on why subprime mortgage backed securities and CDO squared and the like were dubious as early as 2006 semi-regularly but because it would appear nowhere in the field of the zeitgeisty media consumer as seen as arcane. The issue of possible risks in private credit and Trump extending 401ks to more private credit probably one of the bigger stories this year as a win for the people who bankrolled Trump's victory but has gotten little play vs more sexy (literally, was a week or two off from Sydney Sweeney) stories even in serious normal media like NYTimes
I remember Gilder from the late nineties being a prophet for broadband. He wrote a book called Telecosm that was directionally correct, but he was also hyping broadband companies that all went bankrupt after the dot com bust. I had no idea about his previous work.
I checked his Wikipedia and he is or used to be an advocate for intelligent design. wtf.
My first main ChatGPT hallucination was it claiming Gilder's book Wealth and Poverty originated the TV/recording phrase "time shifting" when it was the CEO of Sony who did that, it isn't entirely a bad guess given Gilder's Life After Television book and other later Gilder writings are obsessed with TV futurism
George Gilder lost a lot of his credibility--a way lot more than he deserved to lose--with some stock market recommendations he made leading into the 2000-01 dot-com stock market bubble burst, most notably MCI WorldCom and Global Crossing. But he was proved right in the long term.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/04/22/220914/the-state-of-the-global-telecosm/
The Grift Doubling Down is alarmingly big, although not so much here on the 'Stack.
What I am seeing is that while the Left is being rigidly policed by the Omnicause, the Right is desperately in need of some housekeepers willing to excommunicate those beyond the pale and keep up the moral and intellectual hygiene. William F. Buckley did an admirable job of this during his lifetime, most notably with the Birchers but also with the likes of David Duke.
The water's fine in the big right-of-center pool, but we need to prevent people from having accidents in the pool--and the MSM throwing in Baby Ruth bars and calling it yet another turd in the right-wing pool.
For the kids who don't get the Baby Ruth reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPxiXGr9nFM
The Older Liberal Center seems to be composed mostly of people who jail-broke the Omnicause. Others will follow and may stake out different camps, but I don't think it will be a stampede for the doors. There's too much cause identity still in the Omnicause.
I don't think it's possible to write about new center-left to left media without the G-word, Gaza. Sometimes I think it's overplayed (and I am personally in a pro-Israel media bubble with podcasts I listen to and main newspaper I read), but it has allowed the left to break with the Democratic Party brand and the center in a way that they haven't been able to do on any other issues for a while, and since pro-Palestine stuff is often subject to bans etc and also allows them to pivot themselves against the "mainstream media" as the chief villain similar to how the right wing media apparatus has done this for ages. It is a pattern going back to at least the Iraq War that there has only really been a left "break" from blue "blob" media when it goes along with what the left and especially among young people sees to be a disaster, ie the NYTimes and such covering WMD claims incredulously, this led to rise of original 9/11 Truth movement and conspiracy media which was originally much more left-coded, then the 2009 financial crisis birthed media outlets trying to look at the root causes in a systemic light (Jacobin, even Vox could be seen as a sort of thing that arose basically entirely to explain exactly why Obama couldn't do this that or the other thing on banking and health). More darkly, I think the frisson and edginess of pushing racist etc issues that attracts some to elements of the more unfortunate right also drives at least some of the anti-Zionism of the new left media. "At last, here is a left that can upset blue grand/parents and symbolic stand-ins/establishment types as much as the MAGA/populist right!" One issue that appears to be much worse on the left is how there are few overlapping audience networks between BreadTube type people, podcasts, websites, to form an ecosystem that includes text/twitch streaming/video/podcasts as a daily consumer lifestyle; I get the sense the average viewer of say Hasan Piker's show doesn't read any theoretical or text-based stuff coming from the same viewpoint
One of the biggest power moves you can make is aggressively discussing something that could be major in the future but is currently extremely boring; the reason the 2008 financial crisis came out of nowhere as a mainstream news story wasn't because the likes of the WSJ and FT didn't have articles on why subprime mortgage backed securities and CDO squared and the like were dubious as early as 2006 semi-regularly but because it would appear nowhere in the field of the zeitgeisty media consumer as seen as arcane. The issue of possible risks in private credit and Trump extending 401ks to more private credit probably one of the bigger stories this year as a win for the people who bankrolled Trump's victory but has gotten little play vs more sexy (literally, was a week or two off from Sydney Sweeney) stories even in serious normal media like NYTimes
The overlapping audience stuff is a good point.
Agree re— Gaza, too. Huge cold spot to miss in this piece
I remember Gilder from the late nineties being a prophet for broadband. He wrote a book called Telecosm that was directionally correct, but he was also hyping broadband companies that all went bankrupt after the dot com bust. I had no idea about his previous work.
I checked his Wikipedia and he is or used to be an advocate for intelligent design. wtf.
he's a VERY weird guy. super interesting on technology, less interesting on things like feminism
My first main ChatGPT hallucination was it claiming Gilder's book Wealth and Poverty originated the TV/recording phrase "time shifting" when it was the CEO of Sony who did that, it isn't entirely a bad guess given Gilder's Life After Television book and other later Gilder writings are obsessed with TV futurism
Wait…there’s an intellectual dark web?
Sort of a dated term, on my part. It's what we originally called the anti-woke center! https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
Interesting, hadn’t heard that term. Not sure I’d associate some of the peeps mentioned in that article as intellectuals, but whatever. 🙂
Thanks for the education.
Np! I'm trying to be less in the weeds w/ online stuff
Gilder’s sexual suicide got reprinted and rebranded recently - complete with “sage against the machine” merch https://canonpress.com/products/men-and-marriage
Oh man