Ben Thompson on the Great Bifurcation: “The Metaverse, in contrast, is not about eating the world; it’s about creating an entirely new one, from entertainment to community to money to identity. If Elon Musk wants to go to the moon, Mark Zuckerberg wants to create entirely new moons in digital space. This is a place where LLCs make no sense, where regulations are an after-thought, easily circumvented even if they exist. This is a place with no need for traditional money, or traditional art; the native solution is obviously superior. To put it another way, “None of this real world stuff has any digital world value” — the critique goes both ways. In the end, the most important connection between the Metaverse and the physical world will be you: right now you are in the Metaverse, reading this Article; perhaps you will linger on Twitter or get started with your remote work. And then you’ll stand up from your computer, or take off your headset, eat dinner and tuck in your kids, aware that their bifurcated future will be fundamentally different from your unitary past.”
Business Standard: “The fact is that the data gauges, especially from employment surveys, are loudly proclaiming that India’s growth model is in trouble. While the increase in welfare measures and social protections can postpone the inevitable and somewhat protect living standards — especially as measured through recent efforts such as the multidimensional poverty index — the fact is that sustained increases in productivity, wages, and job security for the vast mass of Indians are the only sure foundation upon which to build economic growth and secure livelihoods. A movement of the workforce towards agricultural jobs, rural jobs, and unpaid or insecure work reveals not just that recent growth trends have not been broad-based but also that future growth might not be built on a sustainable foundation. Of all the government’s pressing economic concerns, this must surely be the most vital.”
Santosh Desai: “[T]he epistemic pool— the combined body of knowledge that we find ourselves amidst is now of a completely different character than in the past. Today the accretion of knowledge is unregulated, unmediated and indiscriminate. If earlier we learnt of the world from books, newspapers, journals, magazines, the odd pamphlet and advertising, today a bulk of our education is being carried out by tweets, blogs, social media posts generated not by experts or those on pedestals but by people like us. The library has given way to Twitter. The pool may be more democratically organised, but it is undeniably shallower. And it stinks.”
