The sands of the hour glass run out on Summer 2023.\u00a0 The various grandchildren are back from their vacations and soon their world will be submerged into the confines of the classroom.\u00a0 But for the next two weeks their parents will be scrambling to keep the kids busy while all of the various work schedules re-mesh after summer.<\/p>\n
And at a time like this, grandparents can be really useful.\u00a0 Camera Girl will be a veritable general.\u00a0 She will wield a spatula like a baton, whipping up scrambled eggs, pancakes, grilled cheese sandwiches and spaghetti and meatballs as the moment requires.\u00a0 I will be more like the NCO trying to maintain order among the troops and where necessary preventing mayhem.\u00a0 I will be more or less on duty for the duration.<\/p>\n
I will try to provide content as best I can but without a doubt there will be some gaps on the site as is probably already apparent.\u00a0 Well, in these dog days we all have to make do.\u00a0 But there will be plenty of fascinating developments in the fall.\u00a0 Most likely the world will be exploding in all directions and in all senses of the word by the end of September.<\/p>\n
I think the days of the Silicon Valley miracle are coming to an end.\u00a0 I think the next bust is upon us and among the casualties, most of the companies that have been providing news and entertainment content are going to disappear.<\/p>\n
The interesting thing to see is who will be the survivors.\u00a0 And right in the center of this trend is Elon Musk and his bet on X.\u00a0 Can he make that bet pay off?\u00a0 Not being any kind of technology maven, as far as I know, his chances are precisely 50\/50.\u00a0 But even the Googles and the Facebooks don\u2019t have much better than those odds to survive long term.<\/p>\n
The basis for our information economy hasn\u2019t reached any stable equilibrium and all of these companies are to a certain extent monopolies that the surveillance state allows to exist.\u00a0 What will happen in the future is completely indeterminate.\u00a0 But for some reason Elon Musk seemed to think he could run one of these companies without the blessing of the feds.\u00a0 Now whether he\u2019s changed his mind about that or not is a question.\u00a0 Free speech is a bold claim in 2023.\u00a0 Can it actually exist in America?\u00a0 That\u2019s what everyone wants to know.<\/p>\n
But almost as difficult to know is whether even fake news can make a profit anymore.\u00a0 Do serfs really need the news?\u00a0 And would they actually pay to read it?\u00a0 It seems unlikely in the extreme.\u00a0 But it\u2019s an important question.\u00a0 We\u2019re all forced to pay for our cable bill and out of that we pay CNN and MSNBC to shovel horse manure through the copper and fiber-optic wires that run down our streets.\u00a0 And they shoot it up to cell towers and bounce it off satellites.\u00a0 But eventually when only Guatemalan and Congolese Americans are left will they be willing or even able to pay for a cable bill?\u00a0 And why would they care what Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper has to tell them about Joe Biden or Dylan Mulvaney?<\/p>\n
It just seems to me that all of this we see, YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and all the rest is ephemeral nonsense to be swept away along with virtual reality headsets and transgender influencers.\u00a0 It\u2019s all just absurd nonsense like flag pole sitters and gold fish eating college kids.\u00a0 Pretty soon the reality of our national debt is going to hit home and then we\u2019ll find out what we\u2019re willing to spend money on.\u00a0 The answer is probably bread and not much else.<\/p>\n
But here at the end of the silly season I\u2019ll enjoy the warmish weather and ignore the periodic sprinklings of volcanic ash that filter down from the mouth of Vesuvius.\u00a0 I mean what are the odds?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The sands of the hour glass run out on Summer 2023.\u00a0 The various grandchildren are back from their vacations and soon their world will be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[101,1763,146],"class_list":["post-25224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-new-media","tag-silicon-valley","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n