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Techvolution: A New Philosophy - Act Two
Blowing Up the Death Star with Evolution
Life's been evolving for billions of years. Humanity continues life's evolution by creating technology. We develop new and better tools in stages like the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Industrial Age. Unfortunately, transitioning between stages is hard. Human Nature being what it is, the powers of the old age hold back the modern era. Since entering the Internet Age in 1970, Darth Blockbuster has continuously defended his mechanical tools by making digital tools against the rules.
Some examples. From the 1950s to the 1980s, AT&T defended its telephone monopoly by successfully lobbying the government to ban devices such as internet modems connecting to its network. In 1984, the broadcast television industry tried to ban video cassette recorders (VCRs) and only lost by one vote in the Supreme Court. In 2001, the music industry defended compact discs (CDs) by successfully suing Napster for giving people digital songs.
Likewise, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb's most significant competition has been in the courtroom. Throughout society, antagonists have found rules that force people to keep using Industrial Age tools.
Needless industry certifications, dense labor laws, government lobbies full of lobbyists, bureaucratic red-tape. These are the endless pages of today's Death Star rulebook. Darth Blockbuster uses this book to prevent new and better technology from reaching the frontline. But before you face Darth Blockbuster and blow up his superweapon, Stargazer, you must learn what weapons you have at your disposal. The most formidable? The all-powerful energy field inside every lifeform.
No, not the Force. I'm talking about Evolution.
The Magic of Evolution
Evolution is life's secret weapon. Evolution works by empowering every new lifeform with slightly different variations. With variations, life can continually test for environmental changes in water levels, temperature, and food supply. These changes create daily frontline problems like being cold, hungry, or slow. The lifeforms that don't adapt a solution die off, and the fittest survive. This natural selection finds which lifeforms are best suited to represent life on Earth.
Evolution works so well because it creates biodiversity. Biodiversity means life can grow more lifeforms and probe the environment for changes. The more lifeforms feel the pain of frontline problems, the sooner life can adapt a solution.
Evolution may not be the Force, but it's positively magical. In tune with Nature's own special rhyme and reason, evolution turned a lifeless planet into an oasis of many different ecosystems. The big drawback is time. Biological variations can take millions of years to respond to environmental changes. Think of the poor polar bears. They'll never understand why Arctic ice isn't reforming as massively each year. And even if they could, no lifeform can proactively change their biology.
In contrast, humanity can change—not our biology, but our "cyborgology," if you will. We have the power to feel frontline pain, reflect on its causes, and create a new tool to overcome the problem. Hopefully, we can do this in time to save the polar bears.
That's why you are so important, Stargazer. Your unhappiness is pain, and life uses pain to determine what tools to evolve.
You need the freedom to use new tools. Because every time you adapt, modify, tinker with technology to find a better solution to your unhappiness, you're helping humanity evolve better cyborgology. Answering someone's question on StackOverflow. Avoiding a traffic jam with Waze. Learning to plant better gardens via MasterClass.
These small improvements in your life, improve our chances of winning the game of civilization.
Techvolution is, therefore, intentional evolution. It's a more advanced and quicker way to adapt that isn't a magical mystery, as natural evolution is to polar bears, but is instead something we can understand.
The question is, what drives us to consciously work so hard to evolve life on Earth?
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin
The Majic of Techvolution
We call someone a genius when he or she uses existing technology to make a new tool. Happily, these trailblazing protagonists are self-motivated, and we already celebrate their intellect and innovations. But innovation isn't the only step toward Techvolution. We only truly evolve when regular people choose to use a new tool.
For example, think of computers. Before they could change the world, people needed to learn to type, and learning that skill takes many frustrating hours. In fact, when stuffy Xerox execs (all males) saw the world's first personal computer in the Xerox Alto (1977), they refused to try it out. The photocopier was the future of office work they said, and besides, "typing was women's work." Happily, many Alto engineers fled to Apple and helped invent the MacIntosh (1984). The point is if everyone refused to learn to type, computers would be useless.
Society only upgrades when individuals learn new tools and integrate them into their lifestyles.
So, what trick does Nature play on us to reach for new tools when we could be risking Darth Blockbuster's, or in this case, Darth Photocopier's, ridicule and wrath? The answer is a force found within us all.
Unlike evolution, the trick is not actually akin to magic. We, humans, understand we're dropping one tool and familiarizing ourselves with another, like swapping out typewriters for personal computers, or using sticks to make fire.
Yet there's still something wonderfully mystical about choosing to leave one's comfort zone to learn a new cyborgology.
It's so amazing I call it majic.
The word is pronounced like magic but spelled differently to note a critical difference: majic is the free choice of a regular person to proactively and intentionally evolve. Even if they don't fully understand how they're upgrading civilization.
Majic encompasses our yearning to learn, grow, and live to our fullest potential as we evolve life on Earth.
We usually underappreciate how joyous it is to learn new tools. But every time we try, we're like a drowning desert fox wearing swim trunks and goggles, yelling out, "I'm getting better!" as he fulfills his dream of learning to swim. Pushing our boundaries is what life is all about. It's majic that keeps us jumping back into the water and out of our foxholes. It's the majical joy of overcoming obstacles, learning new skills, and trying again, that keeps us playing the game of civilization.
I mean, why would we all play sports, puzzles, and computer games, if we didn't love overcoming challenges?
Techvolution plays on our love of majic. The ruling philosophy is supposed to encourage people to majically bond with any tool that will solve frontline problems.
Yet what do ordinary people do when antagonists say improving society is wrong?
Majic: The natural inclination of a person to learn, use, and hold new tools to increase their natural abilities. Majic inspires people to become player gods who solve frontline problems and thereby help humanity win the game of civilization. A majician teaches other people new tools.
Using Majic to Filter the Rules
Darth Blockbuster writes rules to keep the tools he commands, and therefore himself, in power. Bank mainframes, insurance underwriting systems, university lecture halls. These are examples of Industrial Age levers of power being guarded by the Death Star of confusing terms of service policies, elitist academic guidelines, and dense government regulations.
But how can a regular person pinpoint a rulebook as a Death Star? Darth Blockbuster doesn't tell people he's Darth Blockbuster. Instead, he says he's the prince or the executive, an earl or consultant. Are these people genuine authority figures in society, or antagonists protecting their paychecks?
It's essential to filter out the good from the bad rules throughout our everyday lives. It takes practice, and it demands cultivating our integrity and inner truths. Yet it's a struggle that's been taking place for centuries.
As an example, you needn't look further than this story of a Maryland farm boy named Frederick, who was born approximately two centuries ago.
Our story is about a Maryland farm boy named Frederick using tools to overcome ignorance. His farm is one of those you might have seen on shows like Little House on the Prairie. Salt of the earth farmers raising crops and families in 19th century rural America. No internet, no school systems, not much to learn but how to survive with your hands and the fortune God gave you.
Frederick worked in the fields with his mother. It was hard labor, of course, there weren't many machines around, so he had to spill much blood, sweat, and tears, for himself and his mother.
In a few years, Frederick was sent to work with a relative in Baltimore. The house was large, and the young family could use help cleaning, shopping, doing chores. It made his mother happy he wouldn't sweat so much, yet Frederick was a farmer and unsure of the big city.
The patriarch of the house was named Hugh. He wasn't around much. His new wife, Sophia, was. She was a foreigner used to colder climates who didn't know many people yet, so she stayed in a lot. Sophia was kind and treated Frederick well. Not as a farmer, but as an interesting person. She made Frederick feel at ease.
One day, Sophia handed Frederick a list of items to pick up from the store. Frederick's eyes looked down, his shoulders slouched, like a dog who disappointed its masters. Frederick mumbled, "I can't read."
"My God, that won't do!" Sophia responded, then continued, "Reading is good. How else can a person give and receive information from... from... the world! I'll teach you; we'll do it together."
So, Sophia began to teach Frederick to read. Sophia was a majician every day and was overjoyed.
Frederick even more so! Finally, all those markings in the store, on street corners, in books, in newspapers, in the Holy Bible, meant something! Go left, turn right, open, closed, discounted, welcome, and Salvation, all words that open a new world!
For the first time in his life Frederick had self-respect. He felt like he was a player in the game of civilization.
Now Frederick danced to the store, and he whisked himself to do his chores. As he kept learning he loved how the world kept getting bigger, and more information kept pouring in.
One day Hugh came home early. He saw Sophia and Frederick reading at the dinner table. Hugh walked into the room. "Boy, get out, and wait in the hallway. Face the wall."
Frederick got out, went outside, and faced the wall.
Seconds turned to minutes. Frederick rolled the newspaper in his hands tighter. He didn't want to go back to the farm. But even more, he didn't want his angel to get in trouble.
Inside the room, Sophia was curious, "What is it?." Hugh responded, "This isn't Ohio... Darling, you can't do that. We could get in a lot of trouble. You can't teach them to read."
Sophia responded, "everyone learns to read in Ohio."
Hugh takes a seat and takes a deep breath to calm his nerves. Now he looks at his naive wife "This isn't a free State. He is a slave. What do you think happens when slaves read? Don't you think they'll start thinking?" Sophia's eyes went wide. Hugh continued, "It's against the rules to teach a slave to read... now teach the boy."
As Frederick hears the hallway door open, he straightens up and grips his newspaper.
Sophia says, "Turn around."
Frederick does and looks at his angel, who talked with him like he was a person. And she looked back and only saw her boy.
Sophia slapped the newspaper from her boy's hand. He didn't let go. She hit again and again and again. Each slap hurt more than a dozen whips on his scarred back.
She slapped, and slapped, and hit, and hit. Sophia was told her new society's ruling philosophy. The majical joy of teaching someone to read, of expanding humanity's cyborgology to better win the game of evolution, was erased.
Sophia now knows what evil is, and she will not do it. She will use the Death Star. Sophia then and there became a demon protector of vile racism to justify human slavery.
Frederick's world shut down again. The one white person ignorant enough to treat him like a person was now an educated convert to the rules that put him into chains. Physical chains if needed, but evil prefers mental chains of ignorance; they stay on so much easier.
Weeks later, Frederick was still in despair. His daily routine was the same. Yet, working under demonic masters is just different. He didn't dance to the store, he didn't whisk to do his chores, and he never saw Sophia smile again.
Demons are never happy. Demons are always on guard.
One day while doing his chores, Frederick saw a newspaper, the avenue to knowledge whose path Frederick was once on. He looked at the markings, saw some words he knew, and one word he didn't. Yet he still stared at it.
Why?
The answer slapped him harder than the demon ever did, he read the words "The Free States in the North." He heard the word freedom before, but he didn't know freedom was a real place.
A shockwave went through him when he realized if slavery was a place, so must freedom be a place too. Frederick realized he could break chains! Because ignorance was always his demon, and knowledge was always his angel. And he fought ignorance and received wisdom, whenever he read.
So, Frederick taught himself to read.
He practiced with "ignorant" white kids on the streets. He read items tags at the grocery store and signs on the road. And he practiced every time he was at the Baltimore dock; did you hear me Stargazer, the dock I said, you know the place, where ships will take you anywhere in the world.
If you can read the schedule.
One day Sophia waited for her boy to return. But the boy died when the man Frederick Douglass walked onto the ship headed north to freedom. The man knew the exact time, place, and fare he needed to get on. He read it, himself, on the schedule.
Reading opened the world to Frederick, and now the free world was opened to him.
The story gets better. Frederick Douglass wasn't happy just reading, he became a world-famous orator and writer. His words changed the game of civilization.
In a world with no radio, video, or telephones, Douglass travels the Northern States and Europe telling everyone the truth about slavery. When the American Civil War (1861-1865) broke out, his books helped Britain reject recognizing the slave States, and thus deprived it of much-needed support.
The irony of a slave educating people about slavery, and thereby helping to end slavery, is the cherry on top of this great story.
Story adapted from A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Free on Project Gutenberg.
Frederick Douglass was a true Jedi Master. His exceptional bravery, persistence, and intelligence showcase humanity's endless potential. He became a protagonist and convinced extras to become player gods and upgrade their society's ruling philosophy against vile racism. His books were levers of power that still improve the world today.
Among his many lessons Stargazer, Douglass teaches us how to use majic to tell the difference between good and evil rules.
Sophia taught Douglass to read. She wasn't told to. She did it because we all love showing our chosen tools, whether they're pen and paper, new apps, or how to tape drywall. It's as natural to spread our cyborgology, as it is for a species to propagate their biology.
When a magician makes a playing card disappear, we smile in awe and childish wonder. That's cool, but nothing new was created, so we soon lose our joy. However, when a majician connects someone with typing, drawing, or reading, they've similarly performed something awesome. They've upgraded someone's cyborgology, helped them solve problems better, and effectively created a new and improved person. This makes us smile for a long time.
In short, majic is Nature's long-lasting dopamine fix to motivate us to keep playing the game of civilization.
Yet human-made rules sometimes say upgrading to a new tool is wrong. Medieval parishioners couldn't read a science book, French peasant farmers couldn't have a musket, a 1990's kid couldn't download a digital song. I can imagine only a few cavemen were "allowed" to hold the flint that starter the fire.
And today millions of tired working moms can't telecommute.
Rather... the tired mothers can (as proven by the recent mad-dash to get everyone working from home).
The question is: why aren't the mothers free to choose what's best for them?
There is no easy answer. Remember in no story does anyone ever say they're evil. Society's rulebook will never call itself the Death Star to evolution. The lesson Stargazer is it'll never be easy to know the difference between good and bad rules. Anyone can proclaim rules. Even kids on the playground can say "only tall kids can play," and others, based on personality, will obey or rebel.
Majic is thus our best judge of the rules. Majic feels right because it's a sign of evolution. It naturally makes us smile. From teaching a kid to walk to teaching a grandmother to "Skype in" and watch her grandkid's first steps.
So, when you're teaching, learning, or using a new tool and someone steps in your way with a rule, ask yourself if you feel happy. If you do ask the rule-maker why he doesn't. Perhaps there's a good reason. But keep Sophia in mind. She gave one of our greatest writers and orators his start. Yet she lived a miserable life watching him achieve greatness.
The Death Star operates by fear, majic by joy.
Safety is fleeting Stargazer. Electricity, the microchip, the iPhone were all made by people who broke the rules. Yet we celebrate their innovators Nikola Tesla, Robert Noyce, and Steve Jobs because they invented new tools that let us feel and spread majic today.
This is why we need Techvolution. A modern philosophy that says growing majic by creating new levers of power for the middle-class is good. And antagonizing the majic of our evolution is wrong.
Seeing the Good and Bad
Stargazer, you're not Frederick Douglass. You're not enslaved, beaten, or being chased. But that doesn't mean we should be happy with our lives any more than Douglass should have been content with his personal freedom. Our society needs player gods to solve today's frontline problems. That means you have to follow majic and fund, build, and use as many Internet Age levers of power as the open-source community can make.
One big problem arises. Sometimes we feel the wrong majic, and therefore don't see, nevermind fight for, new tools. Darth Blockbuster is sly. He knows we love new and exciting technology. So he co-opts majic with an unnatural and anti-evolutionary force.
One I call dark majic.
Dark Majic Masks
In Nature, there are continual adaptations of existing lifeforms, and then sometimes entirely new lifeforms. In Techvolution, this is the difference between upgraded technology and an entirely new tool.
Upgrading a technology, such as going from sedans to SUVs, VHS to DVD's is a small change. While each product is different technologically, they still do the same job. While DVDs are better than VHS tapes, a person still needs to rent movies from Blockbuster. SUV users may have more style and features than a boring sedan. But all things considered, they're driving on the same roads, ending up in the same places, and are thus identical cyborgs. The point is, a brand new technology doesn't start a political battle. The Death Star isn't fired up, so to speak.
But when we've upgraded enough technologies, like microchips, touchscreens, batteries, and Wi-Fi, a protagonist can unlock a new tool like smartphones. New tools solve problems in a new way.
And this is a big deal. While old technology doesn't die. AM radio, horses, books aren't going anywhere. Even Netflix still rents millions of DVDs every year.
But a new tool prompts a big question: who controls it? If the people no longer need the protection of a castle, do they need the king and his gates?
While the game of civilization is the struggle to overcome problems by upgrading technology and inventing new tools, politics is about the battle to control the most essential tools; the levers of power. Netflix can rent DVDs because it controls internet streaming.
When a new tool arrives, the people with the old tool fight to retain their power. While inventors imagine a modern society that shares it.
Darth Blockbuster will gladly fire up the Death Star to use society's rulebook to suppress new tools.
But lawsuits, lobbying, and other techniques take time and money. It's better for the antagonists if Main Street's love of majic is misdirected for the continued enjoyment of old technology.
For example, gas cars kept customers away from electric cars with techniques like mass advertising, fancy auto shows, and spectacular chromes plated V8 power! Electric vehicles like Tesla are a new and better tool because they have far fewer parts and can be fueled using renewable energy. With a solar roof, player gods can even fuel their own vehicles.
But because of intense marketing and cultural bias in general, most Americans didn't (and sometimes still don't) see the majical potential of electric vehicles. Which is why I call anti-evolution persuasion techniques dark majic.
Note, this doesn't mean car culture is bad. Stereotypical car guys know how to build things and are inherently very valuable to society.
It means the millions of people slogging themselves through bumper to bumper traffic every day inside 300+ hp cars and trucks is silly. Instead of solving the underlying problem, a horrible commute, expensive lease payments, buying oil from nefarious countries, dark majic sugarcoats. A polished up old tool might as well be a veil over our eyes.
Today, dark majic surrounds Industrial Age tools with spectacle. Soda marketing campaigns and credit card reward programs are easy examples. This fake majic is insidious. It gives people the joy of learning about technology but doesn't upgrade their cyborgology. Like a corrupted rule book, dark majic stalls our society in the game of civilization.
To destroy the Death Star Stargazer, we have to first remove the dark majic masks antagonists work so hard to put on us.
Dark majic: Methods and techniques used to keep a person using an old tool. Dark majic gives regular people a false sense of joy and accomplishment, so they don't upgrade their cyborgology and become player gods. A dark majician tricks people into being extras.
Dark Majic
I've processed thousands of car crash insurance claims. While claims get quite emotional, usually, the task is straightforward. Drivers call a call center, claim adjusters (me) ask them questions to get them back on the road. Over 99% of claims are paid. The job is mostly filling out paperwork.
One question showcased how deeply our society can fall for dark majic.
Among the many questions I had to ask customers, one was their car's color. I'd often hear something like, "It's midnight summer blue." Being somewhat of a jokester, I'd sometimes play around and ask, "you sure it wasn't sunrise winter blue?". And the customer would almost always reply with, "No, it's the midnight summer. I'm positive."
What the customer meant to say is "blue."
My chuckle would turn into amazement when I'd ask about the other car. I'd almost always hear, "I have no idea."
It was a pain because my job was to get this information. But even though they were just in a car crash together, customers usually didn't remember a thing about the other car. I mean nothing. Not the make, model, color, not even if it was a sedan or SUV. When a driver ran into a horse, they'd remember lots of details, but a car?
Usually, I'd have to write "unknown" and move on.
We think our vehicles are so unique and special. It's not a car, it's "The original Sports Utility Vehicle: a fearless leader and stylish benchmark. A DX1602w, with Sunrise Blue Metallic paint". I'm not kidding. People would talk like that. And not know a thing about the other car.
Which, of course, means the other person didn't know anything about their car.
And that's dark majic.
People living in 2020 are tricked into acting like it's 1930 when the first cars were new and majical. Can you imagine how cool it was, when people used to walking or riding a horse and carriage, started to cruise the roads, take road trips, and visit faraway friends.
The cars of the early 1900s were a significant transportation upgrade. They created new and better cyborgs, like us getting hi-speed internet for the first time.
But today is 2020. Cars are everywhere and thus not that special.
The truth is cars aren't new and exciting. They're already integrated into our lives. More chrome, keyless entry, leather interior are refreshing and enjoyable, but in the end, they don't really matter too much. You're the same cyborg with almost any car.
Polishing up old technology doesn't upgrade civilization.
My customers admitted as much. After an accident, what they wanted most of all (by far) was a rental car. Fancy features and made up colors didn't matter; they just needed to get around.
Dark majic turns us into introverts trying to show-off to other introverts. We think we're controlling levers of power. In reality, we're really just non-playing characters living in the past. That's why we brag about what consumer stuff we have, like new cars or bigger houses, instead of talking about what we've achieved with these tools.
Have we made something new, "learned to make fire", so to speak? Dark majic tricks us into thinking creating new stuff isn't important.
So, before antagonists use their Death Star, they distract us with false luxury. To be a happy community in the era of mass-collaboration, Main Street has to wake-up to dark majic, and then take on the Death Star.
Happily, we already did. Against Darth Blockbuster himself.
Darth Blockbuster Uses Dark Majic and the Death Star
Industrial Age industries use dark majic to keep their customers attached to an aging product. Today's Hollywood, with its endless remakes and franchise, is a great example. But Tinseltown didn't start out as replicators of entertainment.
Today's studios were started by innovators. At first, they were based around New Jersey. They only went to Los Angeles to escape the ceaseless patent trolls of East Coast technology firms like the Motion Picture Patents Company.
Once the new film industry was established in California, master storytellers like Samual Goldwyn, David O. Selnick, and Irving Thalberg made movies into a worldwide sensation. Like Steve Jobs used digital technology to glue us to smartphones, these creators used projector, sound, and film technology that glued people to theatre seats.
By the 1930s, Hollywood's Studio System was the Silicon Valley of its day.
However, over the next decades, things changed a lot. Television came in 1948, which obviously hurt the movie business. Worst was the government (foolishly) banned studios from owning, or even collaborating with, movie theatres—which broke up the studio system that worked so well. By the 1970s, the movie industry was in big trouble.
The industry was saved by a few good movies like The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977).
However, by this time, the movie industry was no longer run by master storytellers. Businessman had taken over a creative industry. Hollywood lost its ability to tell original stories. Starting in the late 1970s, the movies followed the ideals of mass-production and pumped out more sequels, remakes, and franchises. Each new release had to use more raunchiness, special effects, and celebrities to attract attention.
Here's how movie legend John Wayne explained it:
All the real motion picture people have always made family pictures. But the downbeats and the so-called intelligentsia got in when the government stupidly split up the production companies and the theaters. The old giants like Mayer, Thalberg, even Harry Cohn, despite the fact that personally I couldn't stand him—were good for this industry. Now the goddamned stock manipulators have taken over. They don't know a goddamned thing about making movies. They make something dirty, and it makes money, and they say, 'Jesus, let's make one a little dirtier, maybe it'll make more money.' And now even the bankers are getting their noses into it
That's how the entertainment industry was taken over by strict businessmen. Once in power, they tried to ban VCRs. The new business-centric industry didn't want its customers to "time-shift" and watch shows on-demand. After the public won by one vote on the Supreme Court, the people (of course) kept buying videotapes.
Enter Blockbuster.
Blockbuster rose to VHS rental dominance by using bar-codes to monitor its videos. While other rental companies were still using paper records, bar codes let Blockbuster move its videos around based on daily demand. And, being very organized meant the company could automatically charge its customers lots of highly profitable late-fees.
Americans loved to watch stories so much, they didn't care about being gouged. In fact, VHS rental business was so good Hollywood changed its business plan. Starting in the early 1990s, the entertainment industry began to use movie theatres as a hype to pump up their more profitable movie rental business. That's why a high "opening weekend" became so important. Movie distributors wanted to give their titles a "must-see" status when it came out to rent, or better yet, buy their movies.
Then came DVDs and flatscreen televisions (1999).
Hollywood's businessman was gleeful. As the public crazed over home theatres, they bought billions of DVDs to watch their stories at home on-demand. DVDs were so popular that many theatre chains—despite jacked-up popcorn prices—went bankrupt in the 1990s. You see, theatres didn't get any DVD revenue. But, Hollywood didn't care about their plight; they kept making spectacular and raunchy franchises and remakes to sell more DVDs.
It worked. The public kept buying more DVDs because we loved watching movies on demand.
The movie industry took credit for the surge in business. They paid themselves more money and hosted more lavish Emmy, Golden Globes, and Oscar award shows. But while the audience seemed happy with movie blockbusters, there was more behind the story.
Fundamentally speaking, movie theatres and home theatres are both technological gates. A customer must drive to Blockbuster like they do when attending a theatre. The DVD was, however, the sweet spot for the Industrial Age powers. There is no theatre capacity for a DVD, and it's very cheap to mass-produce plastic discs. Thus, the industry could use digital technology to lower the costs of mass-production, while still charging premium prices enabled by a physical product.
Just like the bureaucracy of the medical and insurance system, the movie industry businessmen used Internet Age technology to its benefit, instead of the customers.
But historical sweet spots never last. True to the game of civilization, technology kept getting better. Soon enough, hi-speed internet (2004) came to Main Street. Now the public didn't have to drive to a theatre or Blockbuster store. Regular people could finally share in the benefits of the Internet Age; on-demand internet streaming was possible.
And predictably, a new tool asked a substantial political question; who controls the internet streaming lever of power?
I was a theatre usher/projectionist back then and saw it all first hand. Some movies were great, but most were bland: comedies, tragedies, dramas, suspense, all genres usually fell flat. Theatres were over-priced and often empty. Customers were unhappy and often told me so. Regardless, the industry didn't care because, on the back of strong DVD sales, they were busy enjoying lavish paychecks, banquets, and award shows.
Any consideration of upgrading their customers to the Internet Age was non-existent. The industry wasn't going to throw away the DVD.
Instead, they double-downed on it. Twice! They made HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (2006). They increased the dark majic of marketing, special effects, and celebrity culture. The Hollywood hierarchy was happy the way things were. They (thought) they controlled the digital technology lever of power.
Their business model was to ration access to it. Hollywood had a mass-production formula of gate-keeping.
- Release movie "teasers".
- Promote movie with celebrities and mass-marketing.
- Release in theaters.
- A few months later, launch DVD.
- A few more months later, release on TV.
- Repeat with a sequel.
That was the Hollywood gate-keeping system in the 1990s and 2000s. Hollywood wanted to keep reproducing blockbusters forever.
In swooped internet Jedi on an ethernet chandelier.
Unknown and unpaid technologists created BitTorrent sites (2008). Although filled with computer viruses, lousy picture quality, and poorly designed user interfaces, these sites gave regular people movies on the internet.
With the lever of power in both hands, DVDs faced off against internet streaming: Industrial Age vs. Internet Age.
A decade before, the music industry was in the same spot. Compact Disc (1982) sales died when customers got internet connections and flocked to torrent sites like Napster (1999). Music executives tried—and failed—to make their own online music platform. When the great Steve Jobs created iTunes (2001) to help save the music industry, the executives still didn't want to share power over the music business.
Jobs said this about his experience, "I've never spent so much of my time trying to convince people [music executives] to do the right thing for themselves." Eventually, Jobs got them on board, and the iPod, iTunes, and AppleMusic are, of course, history.
The movie industry rejected the lesson of Napster.
Ever notice how online movies don't include opening credits, red-carpet interviews, and politically charged acceptance speeches. When the public controlled the lever of power, the first thing they did was erase this filler because its useless dark majic.
When in control of the lever of power, the public wants the simple majic of a new story.
It should be no surprise, the public abandoned the DVD and flocked to online movies.
So the industry fired up the Death Star.
The same public who bought billions of DVDs and movie merchandise toys. That was paying 800 million a year in DVD late fees. That created movie fan clubs and flocked to comic-cons; was declared evil.
The movie industry put FBI warnings on their products, lobbied the government for harsh punishments, and demanded the public feel ashamed for not buying DVDs anymore. Endless interviews were given to mass-media reporters as threats of lawsuits were mailed out to customers.
The industry refused to do the hard work and evolve. Instead, they called their own customers' disloyal thieves.
And here was born Darth Blockbuster.
Hollywood became antagonists who preached antagonism as they actively and knowingly tried to force humanity to keep using old tools in our cyborgology. The same industry that fled East Coast patent trolls was itself relying on rules over innovation. Rather than sending us quality stories over the internet, Hollywood used dark majic and the Death Star to make us keep buying DVDs, Blu-rays, and HD-DVDs.
Yet here was the battle I wandered into. The Industrial Age was taking its stands against the Internet Age. It was quite the battle to try and save the DVD. Before we find if the villain could save the Blockbuster (I know you know the answer, but indulge me), let's take a short break.