The Anomaly

Here’s a question I've always been fascinated with: why is it that the things like free markets and the Internet—things which have massively increased the choices available to us—why is it that these things are so often isolating?

There seems to be a bias in these systems. They systematically misinterpret what people want.

Because it's clear that people want belonging, they want connection, they want love, they want to go on adventures together.

But, somehow, these systems that give us so many new choices, that unlock so much value— they seem to be better at giving us individual experiences than collective ones.

They also seem great at addressing a long tail of tastes. You can find whatever kind of cat videos or blue jeans or porn you're into using markets and the internet.

They’re great at addressing a long tail of tastes, but not as good at addressing a long-tail of kinds of meaning.

Everyone has different sources of meaning—you may find it meaningful to be wildly creative; she may find it meaningful to be quietly contemplative; they find it meaningful to be loved deeply. But somehow the internet and the market seem weirdly biased against both social things and meaning. Biased towards individual things and preferences.

Is Real

Most of us recognize this bias.

We use words like “consumerism” and “atomization” to mean exactly this bias—this isolation and lack of meaning.

And most of us experience it directly.

It's not impossible to find ways to be creative in the market, it’s not impossible to buy a house together, to create a community using markets. It's not impossible, but it sure as hell ain’t easy.

Compare it to how easy it is, to find that perfect type of porn, or to satisfy your individual preferences.

Has Been Getting Worse

Not only is the problem real, it seems to bee getting worse.

We see a progression over the last century.

• Multi-family homes gave way to single-family homes.
• Church communities were replaced with individual yoga classes, mixed and match via an app.
• People used to hang out on the porch with their neighbors; then they started watching TV as a family; then they switched to multiple TVs, one in each room in the house; finally the TVs got upgraded to smartphones. Each person staring at their own rectangle of glass.

I mean, I think the internet and markets have been good for us in many ways, but the fact that our progress on the one side has been stapled to increasing isolation and meaninglessness, on the other side seems... bad.

Like, one of the worst things that's happened to humanity.

And it's still getting worse. The meaningless and individualism have started to interfere with politics and the overall social fabric. Individualized apps and porn have started to interfere with the formation of loving relationships.

What was earlier just a downside of markets and the internet, is now getting existential.

My Theory

So why does this happen?

My theory has to do with the nature of market-success, or Internet-success.

You can think of each video on the internet, each business in a market, as a kind of a sensor. It’s a sensor that’s reaching out and touching humanity—hoping to strike a chord.

• If it's a business, it’s hoping to grow; to make a lot of sales.
• If it's video, it’s hoping to get a lot of views or clicks.

So each business, each video is like a tendril, reaching out in a vast multi-dimensional space, hoping to strike a chord.

So I think, that if there's a bias towards individualism and preferences—away from meaning and sociality—that bias must be in what these tendrils are sensitive to.

The bias must have to do with the difference between what we click or buy most easily, most readily—between that, and what we really want out of life.

There is—clearly—a difference! There’s a difference between “revealed preference” or “engagement” as a measure of success, on the one hand, and what’s really meaningful to us, what we really care about.

So... if we wanted to fix this problem, we’d need markets and the Internet to be more sensitive to what's meaningful to us, rather than just what we click or buy.

Contents

I think I know how to do that. And that's what this talk will be about.

• It turns out that we need a new way to think about what we're offering. We're not in markets. We think that we're offering products and services or the internet we think we're offering media content apps in the first part of this talk, I'm going to give a different taxonomy different way to understand what we're offering what these sensors are that are going out, trying to detect success and then, we also need to be sensitive to another kind of thing, something besides individual preferences. In the second part of the talk, focus on what are we becoming sensitive to. I'll call when I come up in this first part, the alternative to thinking in terms of products and services, or content call that thinking about making space making spaces
• second part this thing that we're sensitive to I call that being sensitive to people's values are sources of meaning rather than their preferences. And I'll try to make the claim that these things are really different. That spaces are really different and the kinds of things that we usually think of ourselves as making products services. And that values are sources of meaning they're really different than people's preferences. That it's a different space of possibility out there. I believe this is a huge, untapped source of potential. Markets and the internet have been a source of huge amounts of economic growth and yet they are incapable of recognizing a certain kind of demand and meeting it with a new kind of supply if we can build markets if we can fix markets, the internet so they can be sensitive to this new source of information we will have unlocked a huge potential we will have created entirely new economy meaning I believe great deals for spending move into this economy. We can only figure out to create the requisite sensitivities.
• The third part of my talk I'll get concrete with all this and talk about what it takes to make spaces that are sensitive to values. This represents I think, a new kind of entrepreneurship an alternative kind of entrepreneurship. One is focused on meaning and values. It's in some ways, an uphill battle. Pioneering to really organize this market will take new marketplaces. You design trainings, new habits of entrepreneurship and that's what I'll focus on in the third part. I'll focus on what kinds of entrepreneurship let you deliver on this untapped demand for meaning beyond isolation