We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
User-generated future AmazonBay by Sean Park is a short film about where technology and trends in financial markets get us in 2015. Fantastic. Literally.
Thanks to a brush with the financial services in my previous life, the film brought a rueful smile to my face. Especially the bit about assets and cashflows of government programmes being managed dynamically and in real time and with perfect liquidity and every financial instrument…
Heh. Watch the whole thing.
Link via Confused of Calcutta.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Got a really strong googlezon vibe off that. Maybe it was a really subtle parody? If it wasn’t, a parody can’t be too far away….
Very cool, but it was a derivative of the “Googlezon” video that was running around a couple of years ago. I also found it interesting that DrKW was hosting that video….
Interesting for what it says about information flow. Its certainly influenced by the Googlezon video from a while back. But, I keep such things at arms length. THere is this notion that the corporate world (Particularly corporate America) is always moving towards bigger and bigger conglomerates and that really hasn’t been true for at least a decade. For every HP/Compaq merger (that stockholders, in hindsight now hate though it is only now finally paying dividends) there are voluntary spinoffs of strong portions of companies. Massive mergers are rare and rarely payoff with the supposed synergies (Time Warner + AOL being the biggest such bad idea). Corporate alliances like are more likely (a la the Cell processor development between IBM, Toshiba and Sony). Neat little futuristic snapshot, but based on assumptions that show a lack of understanding of modern business.
The film-makers also don’t understand the direction of technical change. As a general rule, if your business model is based on ignorance, and people needing to pay a toll to find something out, expect it to go away. EBay is very vulnerable to this in 2 of its 3 primary market functions (aggregating auction participants, tracking reputation).
OTOH, the larger point about asset classes blending together and becoming more accessible is valid.
Though I found the fixation on sports-betting a bit silly.
That *has* to be parody. It far too dumb to . . . otherwise, Sean Park really, really thinks highly of himself – and far in disproportion to his apparent intellect. Aren’t only geniuses supposed to be egotistical? Or is the web responsible to morons getting into that market too? After every single, verbose, bombastic point I thought to myself,
And when did sports betting become part of Darth Vader’s plot to take over the world?
. . .
*Oh, no!* THEY’RE(tm) are going to take over *everything!*
Some good comments/criticisms. Especially Russ Goble’s point on massive mergers. Perhaps this and this can shed some light on the real and perceived shortcomings of the film. And yes it was inspired (in its form at least) by Googlezon.