New requirements

The tension in the world is most acutely felt at its frontiers.

And the actual world is the most obvious starting point.

Our glaciers, once beacons of nature's majesty, are now symbols of hopelessness. We find ourselves impotent opposite their massive presence and unstoppable and historical ebb. Our systems unable to adapt and respond and our interests unable to align… in time. 

Our borders, once gateways to discovery, have transformed into barriers, breeding grounds for conflict and distrust - the frontlines for our forever wars. Together we watch with bated breath, as we walk the brink of regional, or even global conflict. 

Travel, universally viewed as a positive journey of exploration and self-discovery since the very first grand tour, now increasingly viewed as a footprint marking the trail of our own excesses. The classic trope of the traveller on a journey to transform themselves, ended up transforming the destinations instead, while returning home relatively unchanged.

 We do our best to grapple with these issues, but not only do they outsize us, they outlast us. This disconnect between long-term and short-term leaves us with a sense of apathy and inertia.

 Our social and economic boundaries are also in tension.

The immigrant, who once embodied the promise of new beginnings and the abundance offered by the new world, has become a stranger not to be trusted, their presence a perceived threat to the sanctity of our well-guarded lives. Even the word itself - "immigrant" - seems to stir something inside, doesn't it?

 Our third places - the shared spaces between the home and the workplace that once overflowed with life and serendipity - are now digitized and highly organized. Indeed our technologies - once promising a new space for gathering and hub for collaborative invention, have since become a layer cake of hegemonic platforms, surveillance-based networks, and dark data alleys. It's unnerving. Our collective mindset splintered into algorithmically-nurtured individualism, leaving only the opaque sense of shared experiences and the memory of a halcyon recent-past. 

 Our generational boundaries - once representing the baton pass of opportunity and progress, now a marketplace for the economic transfer of wealth from young to old. The sequestration of this wealth in older generations through compound returns and higher asset prices has the effect of locking out the young from similar opportunities at comparative stages in life, driving a widening generational divide and a regression in generational mobility.

Our economy - once an expanding network of multilateral cooperation, now a retreating series of blocs whose memberships are defined more by what makes members familiar to each other than by the mutual interest to be found in including those that are different. This all driven by the increasing attractiveness of populist ideas, catapulted into the collective debate by charismatic men, tempting a disavowed middle class who were promised something better from this new open world of exchange… that never seemed to arrive.

 Consequently, a skepticism of those who are not like us has emerged with powerful force.

 As a natural reaction, a kaleidoscope of counter-movements has emerged, each vying for influence in a tug-of-war with the status quo.

 Some of these are rather pessimistic, choosing to push pause, de-fund, abstain, or set in reverse the existing structures that mechanize progress.

 Some are nihilist, engaging in retro futures for the sake of irony, nostalgia for the sake of comfort, or imagined universes seeking a new romance embedded in mythologies and stories.

 Some are capitalistic, proposing hacks to the system for fast enrichment, bite-sized methodologies, and personal wealth schemes.

 Some are radical, challenging identity, seeking to overthrow the existing governance, alter the past, opt out, or cancel.

 Some are techno-utopian, some are techno-dystopian - in either case techno-centric - placing a close to religious reliance on the ability of innovators to deliver a future within which we will live and live by rules defined by them.

 As a result our cultural discourse has become unpredictable, unsettling, and sometimes thrilling. 

 These tensions and the mass of initiatives that follow bear upon the industries and organizational structures that operate around our libertarian values. They find themselves under a new and unusual pressure and consequently, in decline.

 In a world where consumer trust once hung on the reputation of brands, a seismic shift is underway. The once-steadfast pillars of industry—brands—are now scrutinized under the microscope of youth culture, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. No longer mere corporate entities, now for the first time ever they are judged as individual citizens, accountable for their actions and questioned over their purpose: to exist at the service of consumption. This not only calls into question their role in society, but can even dictate business performance, for better or for worse.

These new consumers are the catalysts for disruption, questioning not only the role of these brands in society but also the underlying economic principles and systems of governance. As this new consumer breed now represent a critical mass, they have the added capability of being able to subvert brands and industries entirely via their powerful share of voice across networked platforms and their decisive share of wallet in the consumer economy.

 Legacy industries, its players, and even the supporting structure itself moves from crisis to crisis, with mere survival becoming the objective.

 The result? A generational destructive cycle where survival, not innovation, becomes the end game. The players within this system adapt to a negative reality, adjusting their aspirations to match. This pessimism becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that leads inevitably to its own conclusions. 

 Success now comes with a new set of requirements

 Because what is needed is to somehow transcend this milieu in order to escape its economic principles and meet new societal expectations. But the capital required to rebuild entirely new infrastructure is prohibitive, and the chances of challenging the major actors and succeeding remains slim as, in spite of their structural decline, they remain the ones who hold all the aces.

 With seemingly everything about the future up for grabs and seemingly nothing being decided, what are we to do? Does this time represent just a pause in progress while we reshuffle the cards, or an obsolescence that requires a new paradigm? 

When a sailboat tacks into the wind, there is a moment between which the wind no longer fills one side of the sail, and is yet to fill the other. In that moment the boat just idles, adrift at sea in a state that is neither what was, nor what is yet to be. This is the subjunctive space we are in right now, pointing directly into the prevailing wind - full of potential energy - but uncertain of which direction we are headed and yet to harness the principal forces that will propel us forward. 

 This messy moment can only come to a resolution.

In the intricate dance of progress, we find ourselves at a crossroads where the familiar rhythm of the status quo no longer resonates. The crescendo has been reached; the established structures are cascading into obsolescence, signaling an irreversible shift coming from the ground-up. Yet, the path to resolution cannot realistically be paved by the technologists, the fatalists, the radicals, or the new romantics.

 The more pragmatic option lies in a symphonic blend of the old and the new—leveraging the infrastructure we already have, and its diverse participants, as a canvas for innovation. By reimagining and reworking the existing framework, we can orchestrate a pattern break, setting the stage for novel concepts anchored in today's values. Mastery of the current system is the prerequisite to this subversive act, because we need it in order to compose a fresh paradigm on top of it, that offers a transformative code of conduct.