Money (in the West) is directly tied to security. We buy expensive houses to be in “safe” neighborhoods. Rent’s cheap if there’s daily gunfire across the street. Lose a job? That’s ok, you’ve got a savings account, right? Retiring? You’ll be fine with that retirement account you’ve been feeding since you were 25.

Now take that perspective and apply it to other things hoards of money are spent on. Case in point: weddings.

Ok, so not everyone who spends lots of money on their wedding doesn’t get divorced. That’s not exactly what I’m saying. And of course daddy’s usually gonna drop as much as he can for “his little girl.” But is there a chance, and underlying view of money & worth that says, “If I have/fund an expensive wedding, maybe that’ll keep ‘em together.” That doesn’t sound right, I’m sure. Perhaps nearly mercenary too.

But instead of looking from the top-down, try the bottom-up. “Man, that wedding cost someone lots of money– ya don’t wanna go through that again..” I’d wager 2nd, 3rd & 4th weddings are less costly than the first. And even independent of re-marriage, wedding-costs go up the more reminders of it you have laying about. And it’s those reminders which can help secure a marriage (even though there’s plenty of other ones too).

Now, don’t get me wrong. Plenty of people get married for under $50 and stay together for over 50 years. Fact is, they have something going, independent of money. But for those people out there who aren’t sure they have that same something, fear can be a great motivator to do silly things like spend $30k on a wedding. I’m really writing about those silly people who never decided to think twice about what marriage really is about.

If there is any way to acquire information about the economic stratification (or at least the GDP) over the last 500 years, I would be thrilled.

Why? It seems that while there is “more wealth” in the world, there are more people of course, and I wonder if the ratio, as well as the ratios of stratification, are at all remotely constant over a long-period. In times of the nobility, town-and-countryside conditions for Europe were much like middle-Asia is today. By today’s Western standards, this is beyond poverty, yet by today’s Western standards, even kings lived without a/c, fast or reliable transit, respectably clean showers and toilets, etc. They just had gold (ok, maybe not, but they had plenty of “huge tracts of land”), and people that listened to them.

I know that any social-strat expert will say the rich are getting richer, and I don’t doubt that over the 20th century, but what and where has this been the case before? Where and when has it not been the case? Anyone, anyone??

Adulthood occurs when one produces more than he consumes. Culturally-acceptable Adulthood occurs when one’s production is of a locally accepted form.

Conclusion: Stop being pansy Ami’s (cruises) and eat more whoppers while ride a bike! Yea Burger King!

The latest American economic fad is to give hardware away at corporate-subsidized priced, ‘hiding’ the actual cost in a monthly service fee. I think we all know and see this with the iPhone 3G having a lower entry cost than the first iPhone, and as with many other cell phones, by signing up for a plan, you get a ‘discount’.

Further examples are the new ‘Netbooks’ being subsidezed by Verizon, and there’s always those online service vendors hocking SaaS.

My verdict: I kinda like it. It’s a new form of credit that makes us play responsibly with our toys for the length of the contract.

But the other half of the story gets real interesting real quick. We all know that when a company builds out a platform, they have but one option and goal: to make money off of it. But what happens when you build out a platform ..and everyone else does too? Upon ubiquity, the price drops. Plenty of supply, plenty of options, no more demand.

I know, I know, I’m being obvious thus far, but the interesting part comes when you consider all this in terms of decades-long entrenched companies and their platforms now being heavily undermined and competed against (Microsoft). What was once a staple, an assumption is now (finally) being questioned. How long before a company’s platform becomes obsolete, and they must not just re-brand, but pick-up decades of infrastructure? IBM did it. But Redmond is usually smarter than all-eggs-in-one-basket. Their desktop market is hardly everything. At least they’re innovative.

But I still wonder how long Windows will be profitable. On one hand they keep upping the stakes (requirements) beyond what people need(Just like Office.. and now we’ve got simple Google Docs!), so they tier-out, but honestly, that’s what Apple did between Jobs.

Fact is, Big Business trusts and buys Big Business.. but us little guys are willing to take bigger risks with less on the line. And when there’s enough of us, we win.

Kevin Kelly proves how amazing he is today. The internet has opened doors wide open, and our economy is now dependent on it, but the transition isn’t over yet. (Obama’s running, but not in office yet either!)

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can’t be replicated with a click of the mouse.

So, here’s my commentary on some of ‘the 8′:

Authenticity: it amazes me that the recording industry is being beyond paranoid about this. Kevin makes the wonderful point that visual artists have had to deal with fakes for HOW many years? Take a clue instead of suing everyone and holding on to a fading world. Change or die. (Or use the courts?)

Accessability: requires open standards and free software behind it! I want my media on all my devices, but often the device manufacturer didn’t intend/supply the ability to access all i want (all the device can!) The Nokia n800 is a great example. This thing can be your calendar, ssh client, webserver. It’s a portable web-dev environment. Did they indend it to be such? Nope. Can it? Yup. So for listening to music on my phone, until the speed gets up on the networks, and software is written to access it, I’m gonna fill my microSD card. But that’s all pragmatics anyways.

Embodiment: Experience. More on that later.

Patronage: dependent on cultural sense of value of ART/$. If the dollar is worth less, they’ll get more. If worth more, they’ll get less,

Findability: I get scared this means “more annoying advertisements”! It just may.

He continues with how being found is near impossible for “the little man.” Hmm.. didn’t I mention this a few days ago about “the little man” taking on these overgrown concierge-systems? Great ideas aren’t great until they’re known. Then comes the question, “How do I get known?” (1) Pay (2) Hard work (3) Always requires time for that ‘long tail’ to be connected. I saw a model of how this works as a kid in the back seat watching rain on the window. When I saw that not all of the water was falling, but some small drops were sticking, I wondered when they stopped sticking in place and started running down the window. Turns out it’s surface tension.. aka “The Cheerio Effect.” Only when more water was applied (through random rain or as it touched another drop) did gravity overcome and pull the larger drop down. But in the process, the drop “wanted” to touch other drops more than it “wanted” to go unimpeded down the water-free glass. As I’ve anthropomophised this example, so it is with people. Given the option, we’ll generally go talk with people we know about something we enjoy over sitting in a room alone and enjoying it.

And oddly enough, ‘trust’ is what makes Google more popular than the near defunct dozens of other search engines (who uses lycos, dogpile, altavista anymore anyways?? But I remember when each was considered “the best”).

He closes with Advertising, something I was fearful to consider as well: Google has become the greatest traffic-cop/concierge. “Find it on Google” doesn’t mean google owns it. Just that Google knows where it is. Google doesn’t advertise itself. It advertises those who have it.
But advertising is a function of “Person who owns ad-able space” & “Owner’s interest in open space vs. $”. I’d like to rewrite that last one as “Interest in ART vs. $.” Aesthetics is the newest highest virtue. We’ve been sliding that way for the past century or two, but What troubles me is, “What’s next?” I don’t ask that question blindly like most.. Aesthetics came to us as being the last in a line of Metaphysics (who could doubt reality?), Epistemology (Who can doubt knowledge?) & now Aesthetics (who can doubt what is beautiful?). Aesthetics isn’t empirical. It isn’t rational. It’s subjective experience. Who can doubt that? Sure you can, but I can’t. (Yeah, it’s obnoxious seeing all these kids in the corner pouting, “My way!”)

There’s only so many Ethical virtues. When virtue became a virtue, it no longer meant anything. “Box means box” is no more clarifying than “HGu” is “HGu.” Virtue was a hold-over from pre-modernism, and Modernity replaced it with pragmatism. Pragmatism values $ over art/open space (Need we one MORE rendition of Joni Mitchell, thank you Counting Crows, Lillith Fair, etc!) and the artists scream back. But even the height of hippie-dom my generation pushes against. “free, open, whatever man” doesn’t work. We know this, instead we use knowledge that modernism has created an apply it in our own ways.

Previously, knowledge had a capital K. It only added up ONE way (Who knew the evangelicals ended up embracing modernism after all!) And in a semi-uninformed society, trust of authority is essential. But if we all know how the government/MS Windows/life works (and fails) we can make a new one. And that’s what my generation is doing: “playing with the pieces” as my philosophy prof said. But when he said it, it sounded dull and dreary. Turns out, it’s ‘exciting’ until it fails. But so is ANY human project.

Think of it, Modernism was exciting when it came out too. Think of all the Modern Dreams- the Jetsons or even Bruce Wayne’s father’s world. His father had a Modern dream if there ever was one. Bruce now lives in the bitterness of it being broken, while trying to restore order. He may be dreaming like his father, but the setting doesn’t portray him as nearly as successful. Why? Any coder will tell you: debugging the system takes at least 3times longer than building it! But it’s exciting when it starts. So is the initiation of child-birth. Child-rearing isn’t nearly as fun and care-free.

One-off heroism and the idealism of dreams vs. ‘reality’ of cleaning up, fixing up, confession of wrongs, persistence, patience. Modernism tried to do away with the latter. But like Terminator & The Matrix, people are the problem to that. People screw up. You can’t remove confession of wrongs and still hope for true life. Modernism took violence against reality. PostModernism is somewhere between using the natural-flowing stream: let it run free, but use it too. Augmented Reality. That’s what pharmaceutical co’s promote. That’s what technology is dabbling with (don’t ride the train with all the scary people, drive your OWN car instead! And if you DO ride the train, be sure to insulate yourself with your iPod).

Ok. I’m spent. I’m sure there’s more to write on this, like how social justice/activism is or isn’t involved,  whether putting a bumper sticker is doing anything, and the hippie ‘one world’ dream. Such a socio-economic transition. Let’s just hope the geeks take over congress

Legislation comes in when the capitalists won’t & grassroots can’t.