television

I’ve been noticing this phenomenon for a while now and this piece puts it into words. It also illustrates that this is not a new thing but a thing that has been going on for 50 odd years now. Everything is becoming this endless feed of moving pictures, just long enough to capture attention, just short enough to not make it boring.

In mathematics, the word “attractor” describes a state toward which a dynamic system tends to evolve. To take a classic example: Drop a marble into a bowl, and it will trace several loops around the bowl’s curves before settling to rest at the bottom. In the same way, water draining in a sink will ultimately form a spiral pattern around the drain. Complex systems often settle into recurring forms, if you give them enough time. Television seems to be the attractor of all media.

Eventually everything becomes a single end state. Whether it be crabs or short video feeds, eventually all becomes the same. I guess it is the most addictive thing out there

Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote mostly the same piece about Sora and the next evolution of this in AI Bicycles and Meta though he strikes more of an upbeat note where maybe this leads to more people creating and getting their ideas out there. The underlying rule of seemingly every content/consumption though is that:

one of the oldest axioms in technology: the 90/9/1 rule. 90% of users consume 9% of users edit/distribute 1% of users create

I really doubt this is going to change much with the new way of doing things but I guess we’ll see