Keys to Understanding Our Times: From Identity to Attention to Reality
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-04-27

Urbanization led to the rise of the author and the original (the need to be seen).

Intellectual property followed 300 years ago when reproduction blurred the line between original and copy and dramatically reduced the marginal cost of copies. 

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the aura (uniqueness) of an objet d'art.

Identity became big business: patents, copyrights, brands, and blockchain NFTs. Distributed ledgers as well as centralised records vouch for Identity and guarantee it. 

Nonrivalrous zero marginal cost private digital goods shifted focus from manufacturing to attention and discoverability: interpellation (targetted advertising) and monetizing via aggregation of big data attention (demographics of attention). 

This engendered self-sufficient disintermediated atomization (attention diverted to asocial online pursuits) and consequently impaired reality testing. 

The next frontiers are reality real estate and commodified but idiosyncratic menu reality (metaverse). Collaborative virtual realities will supplant physical ones and reality substitutes (sex dolls, intimacy apps) will proliferate. 

IRL AI will displace people as friend, advisor, interlocutor, lover, and service provider. Free people up to construct online simulations and inhabit them. But also force the introduction of mandatory digital identities, hopefully based on blockchain rather than government regulation.

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