Why are we so fixated to not imagine any alternatives from what exists on the left vs. right spectrum? Do the economics of the past not fit the containers of the present? Geoffrey Colon asks and answers questions about the power shift from the knowledge economy to the creative economy.

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“How will you make buses free?”

Well, how do we make any public service free?

Libraries, the last I checked have been free for some time.

And not many people complain about those.

The internet has reshaped behavior. Not always in a good way. But now it wants to disrupt how we govern. And this could actually be a good thing. Why? People are just asking that their power as a collective in the form of taxes be directed to the things we want more of. Not what some representative thinks we want more of. In a world where the internet isn’t new, what scares those in power is that what they think we want, maybe we don’t really want at all.

This leads us to the current situation of efficiency over progress. Because big tech has a huge monopoly and stranglehold on the world economy, how we do business, how we communicate, how we police, how we work, how we live; we are seeing moves for them to become bigger, more powerful, to have more oversight where they have an ultimate stranglehold on power. They are becoming nation states unto themselves. Some in the creative class see this and are calling it out. Now this ripple effect is reaching politics. And this is causing many to finally wake up and question old institutions and outdated systems. If you’re an old fashioned politician on either side of the aisle peddling a bunch of propaganda and spouting canned talking points, good luck. Authenticity which wins on social media has now seeped into the political water. And it seems to be winning.

We aren’t asking a cult of personality anymore. We don’t want cult leaders. We see what is happening with the current digital Jonestown in place. We want leaders who remove obstacles so that the collective can rise. We are tired of assuming someone will represent us when we feel like we can represent ourselves better as a unified force. We don’t assume everyone who can’t feed themselves is lazy or incompetent. We are starting to realize more and more that society and the sum of the parts is greater than a few wealthy individuals who use corporate welfare to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

This is a huge shift over the past 40 years where we were told communal thinking was bad, individualism was the only way. Where we were told government was bad, that privatization and the logic of the markets was the only way. Where we were told anybody could be anything they wanted to be, even if the system isn’t really designed to help them be that. We seem to be complacent with the fact we reward people who move pixels around on a screen then people who move physical bodies from a bed to a chair. That one is worth $1500 an hour and the other only worth $15 an hour. We seem to be quick to label ourselves as if that is enough for us to get into the pearly gates of an unproven afterlife while ignoring the plights of our fellow humans in the here and now.

When people say things are not possible, that we’ve tried that and it doesn’t work, that things are going to go to s**t, then we’re giving up on the one skill that has carried us through as humans forever. That allows us to expand our minds in ways not deemed possible.

Imagination.

We’re no longer in the knowledge or information economy. But the powers that used big data to enrich themselves don’t want you to get this memo. They don’t want you to imagine an alternative to what has existed for thousands of years. They want you to stay on the straight and narrow path. Because doing anything different prevents their growth. And these powers want us to simply choose from two very narrow options. Both not that very different from each other. Both dressed up in two colors. Do you want red or do you want blue? Those with imagination are questioning where are the green, yellow, purple, pink, black, white, grey, turquoise, orange options?

We are fully in the imagination era now. If we would actually exercise it. But someone keeps telling you to believe anything the intelligent assistant tells you. This is why big corporations are trying to dig in their heels, laying people off to enrich what shareholders remain holding the stock and seeing the end of the world before seeing the end of a financial system that seems to have run its course.

What if this layoff collapse going on around us is actually an opening? Is it a signal of the emergence of smaller indie creator DIY systems as the next infrastructure of work and a shift from managers to makers? What if we have a barter economy take the place of the financialized one that dominates now? In the design world, we have always focused on human needs. I sense many are finally catching up to this after a hard lesson that big systems will care about you for life (they won’t) and now realizing there’s nobody coming to save us. Only we can help save each other. Only we can use our imagination to imagine what we want the world to look like next.

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Are we now in a world of peak hypernormalization? Watch and decide...