I would say that you're missing a category in your complexity step up. Rome wasn't a real city - it's a metropolis. Most of the urban areas we have today are such.
A city, rather, is an urban area AND it's surrounding countryside where the two are intertwined in culture and production. It's not a real city if it isn't mostly self sustaining in most areas. Certainly food, but then the culture of a city should be it's own. The folk in the countryside contribute the low arts, the folk arts. The city contributes the high arts.
A metropolis is rather a city that is NOT self sustaining, and requires the parasitical relationship where it drains resources from other areas in order to survive, and is also a step larger than a city could properly be. It requires regular influx of food, workers, materials, etc - to be able to survive. The only reason we have so many Metropoli in the US is because we've basically enslaved not only our own populations to be able to sustain them; but also the rest of the world. It began with the Monroe doctrine with banana republics, but spread through the dollar system's weaponization of debt and resources. When those began to run out, we practiced more usury upon our own citizens.
I've written about this and can link if anyone wants it
Anyways, I suspect there will be more localization somewhat similar to what you talk of - I just think that it will be along religious lines. There's too much conflict coming in the way of the breakdown of the Empire for less motivating factors to be the organizational principle. Trust me, even with religion in common there's still plenty of disagreements. You can see this already happening around many Latin Mass parishes in Roman Catholicism. I imagine there's more happening in the Orthodox as well. But people will in/out group with what matters - what they're willing to fight and die for.
Because it will likely come to that. We're all already feeling it.
I suppose you can make a fair point there. I think that for the purposes of this specific discussion that distinction isn’t very relevant. On the grounds that as methods of cultural organization, in both cases, either extensive coercion is needed, or a moral system that allows for disparate tribes to organize collectively.
If it comes up, in a discussion on civic organization, I’ll be sure to denote the difference. A parasitic relationship with the surrounding agricultural community is definitely more complex than a simple population hub. Most large urban areas, however, must parasitize surrounding agricultural communities to survive, all the way back to Mesopotamia.
It's an unfortunate fact that mass organization requires hubs where agricultural production is simply not going to happen.
See, if you think that (as appears to be the case) cities as I’ve described are true - then there’s a certain limit to it. It has somewhat of what we think of as “city-state” to its character. And this is because they naturally form out of tribes and people. To be a true city it would have some sense of unity that comes from multiple families getting together in order to determine how best to pursue the common good.
To do that they have to have a common sense of religion, morality, and values. There has to be intermarriage between the families and stability of purpose/place - they in effect become somewhat of their own race. You can look not just at the Italian city states, but places that still have their own national identity in this globalized world such as Catalonia. For most of human history, race/nation meant the same thing, and you’d consider Catalonia to be a part of an Empire, it’s own kingdom, or a nation state depending on the time period.
I would thus posit that most cities in human history did not require extensive coercion. They sprang from people coming together and being like minded. Those that didn’t like it left for another city. There are more reasons than just money to leave a kingdom.
My argument would be that the brutality of the coercive systems (this includes regular law enforcement) scales with the square of the number of competing tribes. 3x more competing tribes? 9x more coercion. To reach this sort of tipping-point, however, the community has to scale up above several tens of thousands of permanent residents. There's not many "cities" in antiquity with populations over 100,000.
I would argue that the Holy Roman Empire and similar post-Christian cities/nations required substantially less coercion to maintain stability than pre-Christian cities/nations in the West.
I agree that traditional religions (or attempts at reconstructing traditional religions) will be central for social organization in the years ahead. It’s the only force that can bring together like-minded people and make a community of them in an age of atomization. Something to resist the digital pull, force people to consistently and regularly spend time together in meaningful ways, and actually care about them. Relatively low cost of entry into a community in which you are actually a stakeholder. It can galvanize people into taking direct actions for a concrete thing and goal. All of my real life friends are fellow parishioners, and they’re the only people I can keep up with and regularly meet. When I’m in trouble, these people can immediately marshal support for me with no concern for repayment or owing favors. I think this is also why the religious question is so central to right-wing dialogue right now.
I understand the argument for localization to be along religious lines, but I believe it will be racial instead. Humans prefer their own and nothing is easier to identify than others who look like us vs those who do not. Not surprising we've seen Leftism focus on White vs. BIPOC as one of their core tenets. Of course, there's also strong correlation between ethnicity / race and choice of religion and political affiliation. And probably many other correlations can be guessed at based on race, such as preferences for music, food and entertainment. Certainly not 100%, but is it 25%?
Depends on how things fall out, what part of the country, religion, etc.
For instance, as Catholics we have no issues with other Catholics of a different race. We care far more about belief structure, morality, etc. Someone authentically living the life of such would be welcome in my budding community. Someone of a different race or even the same would not if they are not doing so.
Second is that white and black aren’t races, but we desperately need races. Scotts are a race. Britons are (possibly were at this point) a race. Catalonians are a race. Spanish, French, American, and British are not races - those are describing people that live in those Empires. Race is about people within a set geographic border, that has a shared religion, culture, language, and blood genetics.
Whites and blacks have none of these, and merely share skin color - not genetics close enough to be called a race or nation.
Anyways, that doesn’t mean that we can’t recognize trends with peoples of that color skin, make choices upon them, etc. Just that they are not race, properly understood.
Many microcultures are not able to sustain a healthy community because they are not holistic.
(Your life cannot revolve around hot rods. What's the hot rod diet? What's the hot rod literary canon? Etc.)
But some are.
Those that can sustain communities tend to be organized around either religion, country, or aesthetics.
I wrote a post called "Big Tiddy Goth Girls and the Tower of Babel" presenting the aesthetic tribe as a possible source for new community after the West falls. The rest of my project addresses the issue in other aspects.
The microculture doesn't have to be holistic, just strong enough to localize. Get a dozen guys into whatever specific niche-topic in the same area and something interesting is going to happen. That's kind of how Silicon Valley was formed.
For example, Silicon Valley has revolutionized the world several times over.
But its narrow focus on technology leaves large swaths of life untouched, so it can only exist as an offshoot of another community which addresses those.
That's a good point. I do not like Silicon Valley. With that said, it is a proto-form of this type of localization. I suspect a that if we see localized microcultures they'll be a lot smaller than silicon valley, a lot more focused, and include valuable community components.
This post gave me a lot of thoughts but the most prominent one is: "You know, you started this post by talking about how all humans used to have a micro-culture, and it was good. But by the end you're talking about how they're destroying society"
By that I mean the family unit. A married couple with children is its own micro-culture. Always has been. And when I think about that, it makes me wonder if the modern explosion of micro-cultures is at least in part driven by the fact that nobody actually forms families anymore
I think that's true. To be fair, I don't think that destroying "modern society" is really an issue. The title is as much clickbait as anything else. I do think that the modern family units are a lot less spiritually unified than they used to be. At the same time, I'm really curious if it's possible to utilize the curated form of modern digital media to re-localize families. I really like the idea of a modern autistic-artisans-guild that isn't just something for dad and his buddies on Discord, and isn't just little John and his TikTok friends. Rather, as something holistic that incorporates not only individuals of the family, but the entire family into an organized cultural microcosm.
I'm really curious to see if microcultures are heritable. I hope they are.
Much as the 20th century managerial revolution divorced ownership from control, the 21st century information revolution has divorced both industrial and social production from population density.
This has massive implications in how we have to organize as a species. We were never suited to towns and cities, biologically. Now, cities are reduced to being government/military and logistical hubs. Thats all they are really needed for when you can communicate with people on the internet and obtain industrial knowledge, blueprints, and soon perhaps even parts from 3d printing.
The left wing bastions and iq shredders that cities represent may have just been obsoleted without any of us realizing.
I’m happy to see other people are discussing these phenomena and naming it microculture is sensible. Also, the minecraft movie was a cultural phenomonon of the type seen in the past. Albeit an ironic echo rather than anything sincere.
That's true. With distributed information, cities serve significantly less purpose than they once did.
I was specifically thinking about including the minecraft film... at the same time, it seems that most of those who engaged with it were quite young. I'm not sure if that's sufficient to count as a cultural touchstone. Minecraft the GAME sure... but the film only barely scratched the cultural landscape as far as I can tell.
Great essay- really insightful. On the IRL front, I keep hoping that microculture, fragmentation and Amazon logistics will allow for a form of heritage revival in which communities select craft goods in which to specialise. I've come across a few examples, but it isn't at anywhere near the scale of a global localised phenomenon.
There are plenty of examples of how this works within the business cycle. Red pantiles were ripped out and replaced with 'ultra-modern' flooring, and now red pantiles sell for a fortune. Many pubs became wine bars, and now all those original furnishings sell for a packet to pub restaurants looking to re-establish an authentic 'pub feel' (although it can feel incredible tacky and plastic, if done poorly).
Whole towns used to centre their commerce and identity around industries like pottery. It would be nice to see some form of small seed revivalism take place as a broader cultural phenomenon. I guess what I'm arguing for is a movement to commercialise nostalgia archaeology. Shared community-based commerce might be a way to reverse atomisation.
If we can organize an economic engine and a localization in one go, then we’ll be off to the races in terms of independent community development. I wrote a blueprint on how to do that “A blueprint for independent enclave communities” that I’ll link below. I think all it takes is the right people and some fiscal backing.
Great essay. As to ‘Micro-Culture’s’, Any large military base, regardless of branch or state is essentially a micro-culture. Everyone on that base is either a war fighter, support of them or dependents. Anyone outside of the base is a civilian. My personal experience was with Marine Town, aka Camp Lejeune or Hollywood aka Camp Pendleton. You and your family essentially never have to leave the base. (For those who might wonder, Pendleton was by far the preferred location, for me & mine anyway).
That's definitely true to a degree. If we can find a way to do it without state sponsorship, that'd be fantastic. I didn't think about that, but I don't think you're wrong. Although it's but a single microculture and on average people are usually involved in 3 or 4 separate ones.
Lots of microcultures have spawned urban areas and full lifestyles. Take, for example, hipsters and SJWs trying to flee Christianity and middle America. They now form 90% of the population in NYC and even try to convert immigrants. Hipsters actually have their own political party here, the DSA.
Absolutely true. We've seen an explosive development of new cultures... which in 1 generation will be culled to only those that produce children. Then they'll be bottlenecked again to those resistant to the negative influences of high technology. Looking ahead a few generations, things will be very different.
Hipsters aren't going to be replaced as a race because there's constant ethnogenesis of hipsterdom in the Midwest, the South and even other countries. Meanwhile, it doesn't matter how many Traditional Muslims we import, their descendants will flee VHCOL cities ASAP if they want to keep their traditions.
Those predisposed to infestation will not produce children. Eventually, a resistant population emerges. We're already seeing cities collapse in terms of birth rate.
this was really thoughtful and laid out a great bundling/unbundling-style framework for culture expansion/clustering and the internet. this is something also seen in technology cycles, and strikes me as both empirical and entirely plausible.
Rao mentions "cozy web" as something comparable to the siloed community concept in here; I definitely agree that microcultures are ascendent right now and will continue to be.
also I appreciate the biofoundationalism reference. I'm grateful you did, because I wouldn't have seen this otherwise. nicely done man.
Good article. I find the angle of how the individual will change and adjust in the future is an interesting perspective. One thing I think you may have not considered or just accepted is that we will have an acceptable level of continuity with our current level of complexity. Something I think about is how do we maintain our food, energy, water and transportation infrastructure. All of our systems are getting old and the people who understand them are going away. It could be a way the microcultures could be a saving grace in our atomized world by maintaining the capability of our systems. The Colonial Pipeline fiasco showed just hoe fragile our current energy distribution system is. That was only a software problem; imagine if it had been a supply chain issue where the CCP was unwilling to send us a transformer or some other part we now lack the capacity to make. our current system seems to be extremely fragile. Too many bad/dumb policies.
That's true. Dedicated digital microcultures probably know more about these systems than the "expert" chattering class. I suspect that if they could be properly leveraged, various interest communities could do a lot when it comes to rebuilding and maintaining crucial systems.
Localized microculture communities would also be incentivized to maintain their own local infrastructure regardless of government support or government incompetence.
To add to your reference to the Colonial Pipeline going down due to a ransomeware hack: There was an inquiry where the Colonial execs were asked "Why didn't you just manually turn the pipeline back on?" The answer was, all the people who knew how to do that are either retired or dead. I'm just not sure we'll develop the "interested communities" that Copernican refers to below. This expertise requires years of experience, and the pipeline of young people going into these industries is running dry.
Yes. This is a good example of where we can not take a step down the complexity stairs and just operate at an old level because we no longer have the people who know how to do the work at that level. We are too reliant on technology mow.
this is a good deep dive into the history of social organization, and the effects of the ubiquitous mediated experience enabled by the Internet and the phone
I'm getting an idea on the Science Epic, and how it'll interact with modern audio-book "vibe-reading" and AI models. Want to write a post on the concept, we'll see if it works, but I might be onto something here. Want to bounce the concept off some people first. Still chewing on it.
I would say that you're missing a category in your complexity step up. Rome wasn't a real city - it's a metropolis. Most of the urban areas we have today are such.
A city, rather, is an urban area AND it's surrounding countryside where the two are intertwined in culture and production. It's not a real city if it isn't mostly self sustaining in most areas. Certainly food, but then the culture of a city should be it's own. The folk in the countryside contribute the low arts, the folk arts. The city contributes the high arts.
A metropolis is rather a city that is NOT self sustaining, and requires the parasitical relationship where it drains resources from other areas in order to survive, and is also a step larger than a city could properly be. It requires regular influx of food, workers, materials, etc - to be able to survive. The only reason we have so many Metropoli in the US is because we've basically enslaved not only our own populations to be able to sustain them; but also the rest of the world. It began with the Monroe doctrine with banana republics, but spread through the dollar system's weaponization of debt and resources. When those began to run out, we practiced more usury upon our own citizens.
I've written about this and can link if anyone wants it
Anyways, I suspect there will be more localization somewhat similar to what you talk of - I just think that it will be along religious lines. There's too much conflict coming in the way of the breakdown of the Empire for less motivating factors to be the organizational principle. Trust me, even with religion in common there's still plenty of disagreements. You can see this already happening around many Latin Mass parishes in Roman Catholicism. I imagine there's more happening in the Orthodox as well. But people will in/out group with what matters - what they're willing to fight and die for.
Because it will likely come to that. We're all already feeling it.
I suppose you can make a fair point there. I think that for the purposes of this specific discussion that distinction isn’t very relevant. On the grounds that as methods of cultural organization, in both cases, either extensive coercion is needed, or a moral system that allows for disparate tribes to organize collectively.
If it comes up, in a discussion on civic organization, I’ll be sure to denote the difference. A parasitic relationship with the surrounding agricultural community is definitely more complex than a simple population hub. Most large urban areas, however, must parasitize surrounding agricultural communities to survive, all the way back to Mesopotamia.
It's an unfortunate fact that mass organization requires hubs where agricultural production is simply not going to happen.
Well, I’d say it somewhat depends.
See, if you think that (as appears to be the case) cities as I’ve described are true - then there’s a certain limit to it. It has somewhat of what we think of as “city-state” to its character. And this is because they naturally form out of tribes and people. To be a true city it would have some sense of unity that comes from multiple families getting together in order to determine how best to pursue the common good.
To do that they have to have a common sense of religion, morality, and values. There has to be intermarriage between the families and stability of purpose/place - they in effect become somewhat of their own race. You can look not just at the Italian city states, but places that still have their own national identity in this globalized world such as Catalonia. For most of human history, race/nation meant the same thing, and you’d consider Catalonia to be a part of an Empire, it’s own kingdom, or a nation state depending on the time period.
I would thus posit that most cities in human history did not require extensive coercion. They sprang from people coming together and being like minded. Those that didn’t like it left for another city. There are more reasons than just money to leave a kingdom.
My argument would be that the brutality of the coercive systems (this includes regular law enforcement) scales with the square of the number of competing tribes. 3x more competing tribes? 9x more coercion. To reach this sort of tipping-point, however, the community has to scale up above several tens of thousands of permanent residents. There's not many "cities" in antiquity with populations over 100,000.
I would argue that the Holy Roman Empire and similar post-Christian cities/nations required substantially less coercion to maintain stability than pre-Christian cities/nations in the West.
I agree that traditional religions (or attempts at reconstructing traditional religions) will be central for social organization in the years ahead. It’s the only force that can bring together like-minded people and make a community of them in an age of atomization. Something to resist the digital pull, force people to consistently and regularly spend time together in meaningful ways, and actually care about them. Relatively low cost of entry into a community in which you are actually a stakeholder. It can galvanize people into taking direct actions for a concrete thing and goal. All of my real life friends are fellow parishioners, and they’re the only people I can keep up with and regularly meet. When I’m in trouble, these people can immediately marshal support for me with no concern for repayment or owing favors. I think this is also why the religious question is so central to right-wing dialogue right now.
A return to traditional religion needs to happen, and is going to happen
I understand the argument for localization to be along religious lines, but I believe it will be racial instead. Humans prefer their own and nothing is easier to identify than others who look like us vs those who do not. Not surprising we've seen Leftism focus on White vs. BIPOC as one of their core tenets. Of course, there's also strong correlation between ethnicity / race and choice of religion and political affiliation. And probably many other correlations can be guessed at based on race, such as preferences for music, food and entertainment. Certainly not 100%, but is it 25%?
Depends on how things fall out, what part of the country, religion, etc.
For instance, as Catholics we have no issues with other Catholics of a different race. We care far more about belief structure, morality, etc. Someone authentically living the life of such would be welcome in my budding community. Someone of a different race or even the same would not if they are not doing so.
Second is that white and black aren’t races, but we desperately need races. Scotts are a race. Britons are (possibly were at this point) a race. Catalonians are a race. Spanish, French, American, and British are not races - those are describing people that live in those Empires. Race is about people within a set geographic border, that has a shared religion, culture, language, and blood genetics.
Whites and blacks have none of these, and merely share skin color - not genetics close enough to be called a race or nation.
Anyways, that doesn’t mean that we can’t recognize trends with peoples of that color skin, make choices upon them, etc. Just that they are not race, properly understood.
I've gone pretty far down this line of thought.
Many microcultures are not able to sustain a healthy community because they are not holistic.
(Your life cannot revolve around hot rods. What's the hot rod diet? What's the hot rod literary canon? Etc.)
But some are.
Those that can sustain communities tend to be organized around either religion, country, or aesthetics.
I wrote a post called "Big Tiddy Goth Girls and the Tower of Babel" presenting the aesthetic tribe as a possible source for new community after the West falls. The rest of my project addresses the issue in other aspects.
The microculture doesn't have to be holistic, just strong enough to localize. Get a dozen guys into whatever specific niche-topic in the same area and something interesting is going to happen. That's kind of how Silicon Valley was formed.
Depends on what you're trying to do.
For example, Silicon Valley has revolutionized the world several times over.
But its narrow focus on technology leaves large swaths of life untouched, so it can only exist as an offshoot of another community which addresses those.
That's a good point. I do not like Silicon Valley. With that said, it is a proto-form of this type of localization. I suspect a that if we see localized microcultures they'll be a lot smaller than silicon valley, a lot more focused, and include valuable community components.
This post gave me a lot of thoughts but the most prominent one is: "You know, you started this post by talking about how all humans used to have a micro-culture, and it was good. But by the end you're talking about how they're destroying society"
By that I mean the family unit. A married couple with children is its own micro-culture. Always has been. And when I think about that, it makes me wonder if the modern explosion of micro-cultures is at least in part driven by the fact that nobody actually forms families anymore
And that's just sad
I think that's true. To be fair, I don't think that destroying "modern society" is really an issue. The title is as much clickbait as anything else. I do think that the modern family units are a lot less spiritually unified than they used to be. At the same time, I'm really curious if it's possible to utilize the curated form of modern digital media to re-localize families. I really like the idea of a modern autistic-artisans-guild that isn't just something for dad and his buddies on Discord, and isn't just little John and his TikTok friends. Rather, as something holistic that incorporates not only individuals of the family, but the entire family into an organized cultural microcosm.
I'm really curious to see if microcultures are heritable. I hope they are.
Much as the 20th century managerial revolution divorced ownership from control, the 21st century information revolution has divorced both industrial and social production from population density.
This has massive implications in how we have to organize as a species. We were never suited to towns and cities, biologically. Now, cities are reduced to being government/military and logistical hubs. Thats all they are really needed for when you can communicate with people on the internet and obtain industrial knowledge, blueprints, and soon perhaps even parts from 3d printing.
The left wing bastions and iq shredders that cities represent may have just been obsoleted without any of us realizing.
I’m happy to see other people are discussing these phenomena and naming it microculture is sensible. Also, the minecraft movie was a cultural phenomonon of the type seen in the past. Albeit an ironic echo rather than anything sincere.
That's true. With distributed information, cities serve significantly less purpose than they once did.
I was specifically thinking about including the minecraft film... at the same time, it seems that most of those who engaged with it were quite young. I'm not sure if that's sufficient to count as a cultural touchstone. Minecraft the GAME sure... but the film only barely scratched the cultural landscape as far as I can tell.
Banger!
Thanks!
Great essay- really insightful. On the IRL front, I keep hoping that microculture, fragmentation and Amazon logistics will allow for a form of heritage revival in which communities select craft goods in which to specialise. I've come across a few examples, but it isn't at anywhere near the scale of a global localised phenomenon.
There are plenty of examples of how this works within the business cycle. Red pantiles were ripped out and replaced with 'ultra-modern' flooring, and now red pantiles sell for a fortune. Many pubs became wine bars, and now all those original furnishings sell for a packet to pub restaurants looking to re-establish an authentic 'pub feel' (although it can feel incredible tacky and plastic, if done poorly).
Whole towns used to centre their commerce and identity around industries like pottery. It would be nice to see some form of small seed revivalism take place as a broader cultural phenomenon. I guess what I'm arguing for is a movement to commercialise nostalgia archaeology. Shared community-based commerce might be a way to reverse atomisation.
If we can organize an economic engine and a localization in one go, then we’ll be off to the races in terms of independent community development. I wrote a blueprint on how to do that “A blueprint for independent enclave communities” that I’ll link below. I think all it takes is the right people and some fiscal backing.
Take a look at that and see what you think.
Great essay. As to ‘Micro-Culture’s’, Any large military base, regardless of branch or state is essentially a micro-culture. Everyone on that base is either a war fighter, support of them or dependents. Anyone outside of the base is a civilian. My personal experience was with Marine Town, aka Camp Lejeune or Hollywood aka Camp Pendleton. You and your family essentially never have to leave the base. (For those who might wonder, Pendleton was by far the preferred location, for me & mine anyway).
That's definitely true to a degree. If we can find a way to do it without state sponsorship, that'd be fantastic. I didn't think about that, but I don't think you're wrong. Although it's but a single microculture and on average people are usually involved in 3 or 4 separate ones.
fascinating article. put it in the to be “re-read” file!
Thanks! Do me a favor and throw me a restack. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Lots of microcultures have spawned urban areas and full lifestyles. Take, for example, hipsters and SJWs trying to flee Christianity and middle America. They now form 90% of the population in NYC and even try to convert immigrants. Hipsters actually have their own political party here, the DSA.
Absolutely true. We've seen an explosive development of new cultures... which in 1 generation will be culled to only those that produce children. Then they'll be bottlenecked again to those resistant to the negative influences of high technology. Looking ahead a few generations, things will be very different.
Hipsters aren't going to be replaced as a race because there's constant ethnogenesis of hipsterdom in the Midwest, the South and even other countries. Meanwhile, it doesn't matter how many Traditional Muslims we import, their descendants will flee VHCOL cities ASAP if they want to keep their traditions.
I suppose, but they aren't having kids fast enough to preserve their numbers.
That's not how they spawn. They spawn by infesting people in the South with memes. Not with their genes.
Those predisposed to infestation will not produce children. Eventually, a resistant population emerges. We're already seeing cities collapse in terms of birth rate.
Which cities are collapsing may I ask? Because I don't think rent or cost of living is going down in NYC at all.
this was really thoughtful and laid out a great bundling/unbundling-style framework for culture expansion/clustering and the internet. this is something also seen in technology cycles, and strikes me as both empirical and entirely plausible.
Rao mentions "cozy web" as something comparable to the siloed community concept in here; I definitely agree that microcultures are ascendent right now and will continue to be.
also I appreciate the biofoundationalism reference. I'm grateful you did, because I wouldn't have seen this otherwise. nicely done man.
Could you link me to the biofoundationlaism article? I don't think I've seen it.
you cite "Biofoundation" by name in here and then link to it at the end of this essay:
https://thedosagemakesitso.substack.com/p/biofoundationalism-ii-the-moral-genotype
thanks!
Flee! Flee the Monoculture!
Quick! You can hide in this subculture.
Oh no, they're sweeping the searchlights! Go deeper, into this microculture.
Go on without me. There's an AI girlfriend at the end, and she's all yours.
YOU ARE HERE
Macro-incisive article!
> If a microculture can regionalize, it can effectively convert a digital community into a physical one
You should check out thenetworkstate.com. And, if you have time, come to the Network State Conference on Oct 3 in Singapore.
Thanks, I'm curious about it! I appreciate the DM and would like to learn more.
Good article. I find the angle of how the individual will change and adjust in the future is an interesting perspective. One thing I think you may have not considered or just accepted is that we will have an acceptable level of continuity with our current level of complexity. Something I think about is how do we maintain our food, energy, water and transportation infrastructure. All of our systems are getting old and the people who understand them are going away. It could be a way the microcultures could be a saving grace in our atomized world by maintaining the capability of our systems. The Colonial Pipeline fiasco showed just hoe fragile our current energy distribution system is. That was only a software problem; imagine if it had been a supply chain issue where the CCP was unwilling to send us a transformer or some other part we now lack the capacity to make. our current system seems to be extremely fragile. Too many bad/dumb policies.
That's true. Dedicated digital microcultures probably know more about these systems than the "expert" chattering class. I suspect that if they could be properly leveraged, various interest communities could do a lot when it comes to rebuilding and maintaining crucial systems.
Localized microculture communities would also be incentivized to maintain their own local infrastructure regardless of government support or government incompetence.
To add to your reference to the Colonial Pipeline going down due to a ransomeware hack: There was an inquiry where the Colonial execs were asked "Why didn't you just manually turn the pipeline back on?" The answer was, all the people who knew how to do that are either retired or dead. I'm just not sure we'll develop the "interested communities" that Copernican refers to below. This expertise requires years of experience, and the pipeline of young people going into these industries is running dry.
Yes. This is a good example of where we can not take a step down the complexity stairs and just operate at an old level because we no longer have the people who know how to do the work at that level. We are too reliant on technology mow.
That's a good point. There are definitely points of failure that we are not ready to address...
this is a good deep dive into the history of social organization, and the effects of the ubiquitous mediated experience enabled by the Internet and the phone
Definitely hope some of your ideas happen. It'd be neat to write some epics in a village that later specializes in some art or other.
I'm getting an idea on the Science Epic, and how it'll interact with modern audio-book "vibe-reading" and AI models. Want to write a post on the concept, we'll see if it works, but I might be onto something here. Want to bounce the concept off some people first. Still chewing on it.
Interesting sounds intriguing.