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The World Belongs to Those Who Create

sophiaellis.co

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Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#41

Post by dredmorbius »

History demonstrates otherwise.

The world belongs to those who can extract, or create rent-extracting systems and networks.

"Creators" probably the least well-served of any labour cateogory, relative to their contribution.

Straight-up wage labour is also under-served, and often below the point of sustenance, but it's the contribution ratio I'm looking at.

In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark (UC Davis) lists the inventors responsible for the first Industrial Revolution. Of eight or so inventors, 3-4 died in poverty, another 3-4 survived only on other activities, or through legislative compensation. Only one or two actually profited by the work they're known for.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econo...

Vaclav Smil points out that the diesel engine and gas turbine are the two prime movers most responsible for all modern power production (either motive or electrical). Otto Diesel committed suicide after financial ruin. Parsons, inventor of the gas turbine, did relatively well, but failed to be recognised for the vast bulk of benefit for his work, which was posthumous.

Creativity is fun, it's intellectually rewarding. Don't think for a moment that market economies offer remunerative compensation with anything resembling consistency, rationality, or proportionality.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#42

Post by dredmorbius »

jopsen wrote: post #40
emerged wrote: post #27

There's no doubt that incredible amounts of time are "wasted" by all of our quick dopamine hit apps and sites. These are the new opiate of the masses. It seems to be something we are all aware of, and we talk of unplugging. Some do, here and there. It's a constant struggle. The new cigarette / snack food. Just as hard to quit - but we should all at least try.

Haven't most people always been wasting most of their time? Before it was TV, Radio, gossip magazines, books, you name it. Do we know?

The distractions weren't driven by vast, A/B-tested, AI-assisted, institutional machines with the resources of major nation-states.

In 1817, your primary distractions would mostly have involved hauling: bringing water, food, wood, and materials into a home, and hauling the waste products out. The metaphor was buckets and baskets, not pipes.

There might have been some home-craft production, or farming. But those were not idle pursuits.

Entertainment was something done rather than consumed: people told stories or read to one another (if they could), or played music (or dice or cards -- considered vices).

And the primary information conduit was a weekly sermon or service.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#43

Post by nnd »

winter_blue wrote: post #9
sharemywin wrote: post #6

the problem is the definition of make and create and what has value has changed. 10 thousand years ago people celebrated when a big kill was brought home from the hunt. 5000 years ago people celebrated the seasonal harvests. 100 years ago you put in a good days work at a factory turning a screw but you helped make a car. today if it's not novel or unique it's not celebrated or valued.

Thousands of years ago, people made art, they wrote poems, came up with wonderful stories and mythology. Every culture has some form of human creativity. Whether art, music, or stories and poems passed down through generations. Creativity is a defining characteristic of human beings. To be creative is to be human.

Well, that's what I thought about as well until recently. But the recent advancements in AI make me questions if creativity is truly unique to humans.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#44

Post by kqr »

icanhackit wrote: post #26

We’ve delegated the larger part of our days on earth to consuming what someone else has created. [...] I told him my favorite example of those who “figure it out” are rappers who are criticized for being talentless but still rake in millions. Who cares if they’re talentless (by someone’s standards)? At least they are still CREATING something! Lil Wayne [...] has released 1,747 songs So the idea is make lots of stuff,…

I think you'll find that the most successful authors will tell you that key to their success was reading a lot written by other people.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#45

Post by kqr »

humanrebar wrote: post #37
rdiddly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And destroy is one of the synonyms of consume .

Some things aren't destroyed when they are consumed. A digital recording doesn't disappear when listened to. A book is fine after it's read.

Well, depends on how charitably you choose to interpret "destroy". Not all books are worth a second read.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#46

Post by closeparen »

icanhackit wrote: post #26

We’ve delegated the larger part of our days on earth to consuming what someone else has created. [...] I told him my favorite example of those who “figure it out” are rappers who are criticized for being talentless but still rake in millions. Who cares if they’re talentless (by someone’s standards)? At least they are still CREATING something! Lil Wayne [...] has released 1,747 songs So the idea is make lots of stuff,…

One of my favorite lessons from Ira Glass's lecture circuit: ideas come from other ideas. The first step to producing high quality content is surrounding yourself with high quality content.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#47

Post by emerged »

jopsen wrote: post #40
emerged wrote: post #27

There's no doubt that incredible amounts of time are "wasted" by all of our quick dopamine hit apps and sites. These are the new opiate of the masses. It seems to be something we are all aware of, and we talk of unplugging. Some do, here and there. It's a constant struggle. The new cigarette / snack food. Just as hard to quit - but we should all at least try.

Haven't most people always been wasting most of their time? Before it was TV, Radio, gossip magazines, books, you name it. Do we know?

Good question - some tools/tech have increased productivity, and others have optimized their ability to drain productivity (in exchange for monetized attention). Sad bit is, I'd be hesitant to trust any scientific studies which tried to weigh their relative proportions (for a variety of reasons).

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#48

Post by emerged »

eksemplar wrote: post #31
emerged wrote: post #27

There's no doubt that incredible amounts of time are "wasted" by all of our quick dopamine hit apps and sites. These are the new opiate of the masses. It seems to be something we are all aware of, and we talk of unplugging. Some do, here and there. It's a constant struggle. The new cigarette / snack food. Just as hard to quit - but we should all at least try.

It'll be interesting to see if these new dopamine fads play out differently. My government puts a lot of effort (money) into making people quit smoking because smokers are extremely expensive on public healthcare. Our goals are 4% by 2025, but even in countries with less of a business case for health, there are still huge campaigns against smoking. Facebook, Reddit, candy crush, instagram and so on aren't really seen…

Yeah, at least not nearly with the same momentum as smoking etc. But i do think the risks and costs of these new addictions are in the collective conciousness. So it's just a matter of time until a rebellion of mass scale IMO.

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#49

Post by ahartman00 »

jopsen wrote: post #40
emerged wrote: post #27

There's no doubt that incredible amounts of time are "wasted" by all of our quick dopamine hit apps and sites. These are the new opiate of the masses. It seems to be something we are all aware of, and we talk of unplugging. Some do, here and there. It's a constant struggle. The new cigarette / snack food. Just as hard to quit - but we should all at least try.

Haven't most people always been wasting most of their time? Before it was TV, Radio, gossip magazines, books, you name it. Do we know?

dredmorbius makes a good point, but if you change always to recently, and time to free time, i think you are right.

Brave New World was published in 1932 after all. "As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_wi...

"In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action."

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

relevant: "The pace of modern life" https://xkcd.com/1227/

Re: The World Belongs to Those Who Create

#50

Post by mannanali413 »

I think that any individual, who does some work creating/building a product/feature goes will identify themselves with the ideas presented in this article. However, the world actually belongs those who can get others to create and build. These usually are the people who have access to capital and use it to generate more capital.
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