Editor’s Note
I’m taking this Friday and next Friday off. So this week’s episode will be short and next week’s episode will be non-existent. Thanks for reading. As always, please continue to reach out. I love hearing from you.
What I’m Listening To
Last year in an article titled Never-Ending Niches, Ben Thompson laid out how the internet has completely changed the underlying assumptions of scarcity and supply and demand:
This point cannot be emphasized enough: the Internet is the single most disruptive
force of our lifetimes because it does not evolve existing ways of doing things, but completely smashes the assumptions underlying them — assumptions we often didn’t even realize existed.
So it was with the Internet and the trade-off between reach and time: suddenly every single media entity on earth, no matter how large or small, and no matter its medium of choice, could reach anyone instantly. To put it another way, reach went to infinity, and time went to zero
It is through the lens of the internet favoring abundance over scarcity that Thompson developed Aggregation Theory, a theory whose definition I won’t be able to do justice for here, but essentially says on the internet it is the companies that aggregate content from other parts of the web (e.g. website links, user-generated videos, filtered photos) and own the relationship with the user who is seeking that content (e.g. Google, YouTube, Instagram) who win.
But a funny thing has happened with the aggregators in the last few years. I won’t go so far as to prematurely write their obituary - habits are incredibly difficult things to break, and most of the internets aggregators are now so firmly ingrained as habits (think using Google as a short-hand for remembering the exact URL) that even with the massive rise in the aggregators stock price over the last year, they still seem undervalued - but I do think we have run into a bit of an invisible asymptote with their effectiveness as curators.
The recommendations aggregators give us are inductive, that is they infer our tastes based on our previous behaviors, and deductive, that is they accept the premise that as a user with X tastes, I am like other users with X tastes, and if those other users like A, then I will like A too.
However, both of these forms of logic tend to ensconce you in a filter bubble and miss the opportunity to present recommendations based on taste.
That these recommendation algorithms are not able to discern taste shouldn’t really be a surprise. Taste is an incredibly difficult thing to describe to another person using even the most abstract of language, but it is nearly impossible to codify or infer through machine learning.
But in a world of abundance, of never-ending niches, taste is the true differentiator. Taste is what earns social capital, but it is not so simple as having it or not. Taste can only earn social capital if it is in the minority. As more and more people adopt a particular taste or style, the expected social capital payout gets smaller and smaller.
To illustrate this consider the Diffusion of Innovation curve:
The “innovators” on the left tail of the curve represent the risk-takers. With each new style they adopt they receive either a payout in social capital or have to pay a social capital cost.
Whether that adoption results in a payout or cost is dependent on many other people adopt that taste for their own and that adoption is based on a number of factors not necessarily associated with whether that taste is good or not. Factors like cultural Overton Windows, whether a particular technology is ready, etc. But the general point is that the variance associated with the adoption of a style or technology by an “innovator” is quite high. As more and more people follow the “innovators” lead (the Early Adopters and Early Majority on this chart), the associated social capital payout and social capital risk get smaller and smaller until that style or technology is adopted by the majority and any chance at returns (positive or negative) go away.
Therefore, the optimum strategy for capturing maximum social capital is to correctly identify the right individuals which to imitate. This will increase your probability of adopting new technology or style much earlier in the curve while reducing your probability of debuting something novel for novelties sake (say like wearing assless chaps to work) and incurring the social capital penalty that goes along with that decision.
This is an important point to keep in mind because not only does this hidden order drive much of culture, but for our specific discussion here today, adhering to the recommendations of a black-box algorithm means you do not have a good probability model for the expected payout of any type of adoption. Sharing a recommendation you randomly happened upon may give you a social capital payout or you may incur a social capital cost. You just really don’t know.
This is the void that tastemakers on the internet step into, they become your trusted advisers. By identifying the right models of taste, you can move outside of any pre-defined niche and capture more social capital. Plus, setting all this jargon aside, it really is just fun to discover new music and styles!
This is the role that LeFtO plays for me. From a recent profile in Mixmag:
Underneath the warm sun that hangs over Brussels, a tiny three-by-three metre shack pumps out tunes day and night to a dancing crowd of onlookers. LeFtO is at the controls of Kiosk Radio, a perfectly placed wooden hut in the centre of Parc De Bruxelles. “Good day to you all outside the Kiosk, live from the park. Thank you for coming through,” says the soothing voice of LeFtO. The chatroom pings with hundreds of messages from around the globe as the crowds gradually tune in for another session out of leftfield from the Belgian music connoisseur.
LeFtO - real name Stephane Lallemand - fuels a hub of listeners with an appetite for new sounds, week in, week out. Becoming a household name at Kiosk Radio, as well as mainstay station Studio Brussel, LeFtO always has his finger on the pulse. A quick peek at the DJ’s Mixcloud reveals a hearty range of genres - with everything from house to rap to jazz and more. Fusing sounds from Belgium’s melting pot of musical talent with his relentless passion for new sounds, LeFtO has gone on to work with major names and labels including Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings, Blue Note, !K7, and Stones Throw.
Cutting his teeth on jazz and new beat, a genre that moulded the shape of electronic music in 80s Belgium, LeFtO formed his early tastemaker know-how via his dad’s record collection. “My father mostly played jazz at home, he had a serious collection which I still own myself. I was probably 14 years old when I asked him for money to buy some records,” he says. “With a certain pride, most of what I liked was made in Belgium”. More a selector than anything else, LeFtO continues Belgium’s tireless musical legacy through his extensive palate, brimming with flavour.
The emphasis at the beginning of that last sentence is mine. “More a selector than anything else” sums up this new trusted advisor role to me perfectly. As the abundance on the internet only grows, we’ll all need more selectors in our lives.
To hear LeFtO, check out his Mixcloud where he posts 2 new shows every week.
Worth Your Time
Disneyland at a stroll - Part VI (Cory Doctorow) - Through the lens of Disneyland and Fast Passes, the SciFi author examines how our drive for convenience and efficiency has led to our world’s tempo to be MAX-ALWAYS. Taking away the texture that leads to satisfaction.
The Day the Dinosaurs Died (The New Yorker) - The article takes us through a computer simulation that gives fascinating detail of what happened when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs struck.
A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community (Cyborg Anthropology) - From @gaby_goldberg “For anyone thinking about online communities, modern friendships, or the ways we experience our digital lives, Howard Rheingold's "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" is a must-read. Incredibly resonant and impressively ahead of its time.”
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce (Esquire) - A fascinating profile of Intel’s Co-Founder and first CEO, Bob Noyce from Tom Wolfe in 1983.
Does the Great Retreat From Afghanistan Mark the End of the American era? (New Yorker) - I first read Robin Wright in her excellent 2008 book Dreams and Shadows about the sweeping changes happening in the Middle East. Since then, I’ve always looked to her as a source to help calibrate my understanding of what is taking place over there.
Mike Rubin
Speaking of selectors, this week I’m featuring Krammer Stoudt Creative Director Mike Rubin. One of my personal style icons.