DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
In a way that really illustrates what I’m talking about. Food delivery services were a big part of the shift to the “gig economy”. So it wasn’t just a matter of opening a food delivery business that fit within the current model of the time - there was a whole paradigm shift in society and how many people work. I think by the time streaming and other forms of online entertainment sort themselves out we’ll see something similar. I think the entire landscape will shift, and it will probably look different than what any of us are expecting now. Maybe Disney and Netflix start their own version of YouTube. Maybe you bundle services that seem disparate to us now, like Netflix and a DoorDash subscription (I can’t help but think that as more and more “intangible” goods flood the world in the form of entertainment, the relative value of physical, tangible goods and labor will increase. You have so many people chasing advertising dollars and a finite number of tangible goods to be advertised.) Maybe the biggest internet stars on YouTube and Discord and TikTok and such get together and start small studios that, 70 years from now, have merged into the next huge global media companies. Maybe virtual reality theaters become a huge thing and revitalize the theater industry because the technology is too expensive for home theaters (in the way that, once upon a time, having a huge screen in your house was too expensive for everyone but the ultra rich.)Oh I'm aware, I was an investor in WebVan back in the dotcom era because I was sure that eventually everyone would want to have their groceries delivered. I just happen to be early to the party and back the wrong horse, but it did happen. Now look at Amazon, Safeway, and others that offer grocery delivery across the country.
I don’t know, I just think the pattern of unpredictability has held with most new technology, all the way back to the printing press. It tends to cause large scale societal changes that don’t fit into our current predictive model. Even my attempts at making “wild guesses” above is really based on the model of society in place now, when in reality they’re probably off because “flooded with free entertainment” culture will probably shape the way the next generation lives their lives in a way that wouldn’t even occur to me.