Jonathan Anthony

Author, "Dis!Organize: An Intrapreneur's Guide To Making A Bigger Difference At Work.

Curiosity; storytelling; culture; content; creativity; change.

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

The book I have been promising for several years...voila!

Dis!Organize: An Intrapreneur's Guide To Making A Bigger Difference At Work.

https://t.co/OcPIdJSzTX

(Canadian link, also available at an Amazon domain near you)

THREAD: 1/19

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

Bravo. Magical

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

A Princeton professor had his students complete an assignment using A.I. It became “the most profound experience” in his teaching career. https://t.co/WLXiD2x7zi

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

On April 17th the U.S. Trade Representative's office is expected to impose fees of up to $1.5M per port call for ships made in China and for $500k to $1M if the ocean carrier owns a single ship made in China or even has one on order from a Chinese shipyard. 🧵 1/

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

@BillTieleman @JerichoCoalitio I 😍 the Jericho Lands development and the agency of First Nations land control. Looks beautiful and will add a lot to Vancouver.

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

Musk also doing this

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Timothy Snyder's analysis of Trump is spot-fucking-on. 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯👇

[Noema Magazine @NoemaMag]

I asked an AI to predict the near future of art & creative work,” @timmaughan writes. “This is the story it told me.”

https://t.co/wsCGp3yFtl

[Musa al-Gharbi @Musa_alGharbi]

For Symbolic Capital(ism), I just published a piece pulling together lots of empirical data to answer questions like:

Did Trump win because of racism?
Did Trump win because of sexism?
Did Trump win because "elites" bought the election?
Did Trump win because of third-party "spoilers"?
Did Trump win because of weak turnout?
Did Trump win because Harris chose the wrong running mate?

As the essay details at length, the answer to all of these questions is "no." It's easy to see how people would be drawn to these questions, but none of these hypotheses do a good job of explaining what actually happened in 2024 (or the previous Trump cycles, for that matter). 🧵

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

The republicans and democrats of the past no longer exist. They have been replaced by two entirely new parties.

In the 20th century, the republicans were the party of classical liberalism, and the democrats were the party of social liberalism (the welfare state). These two parties no longer exist.

This isn't obvious because both new parties used the old names and infrastructures, which they infiltrated. This was easier than building something new, and allowed them inherit the resources and connections of the old parties.

But they are not the same, because not only are the philosophies different, the new parties aren't based on philosophies at all.

The new parties represent communication technologies.

The neo-democrats are the party of television.

The neo-republicans are the party of the internet.

This single relationship underlies all of their character and policies.

You see, in the 20th century, the prevailing masss communications technologies of the day — radio, television, newspapers, print books — were all expensive to produce, but cheap to copy.

Making a TV show, running a radio station, publishing a newspaper, all required a lot of resources. But reaching one more person with that show, that broadcast, that book, was very cheap compared to the initial investment.

This resulted in a particular communications style — one to many. Those who owned these media and could afford to run them, spoke, and everyone else listened.

Then the internet came along. Many hands touched it, first DARPA, then universities, but finally private enterprise made it take off.

And the cost structure was different. Internet media was cheap to copy, but also cheap to make. Anyone could put up a webpage, and it got easier all the time. And eventually people created websites whose whole purpose was to allow anyone with a keyboard to say what whatever they wanted to anyone who wanted to listen.

This resulted in a different communications style — many to many. Everyone talking to everyone else, or at least to anyone they wanted to talk to. Many people still wanted to just listen, but anyone who wanted to talk could do so.

Obviously, this change in the shape of the national conversation changed the content of that conversation as well ... by a lot.

But it also bifurcated the tools of power.

America cannot be ruled by force.

It's too big, too sparsely populated, and too heavily armed. Opposing armies can be wiped out with bombs and missile and drone swarms, but territory can only be occupied by men with guns.

And the American population is so spread out, with so many guns, that no army in the world can pacify any significant portion of it except a few densely packed, lightly armed cities. And those cities are dependent on rural people to supply their water, power and food.

So force is out.

The tool by which pre-internet America was ruled was deception.

If you own, or seize control of, the means of communication, which you can do because they are few-to-many, then you can put out any story you want.

This allows you to control what the accepted facts are, because you can say anything without fear of contradiction.

Even those who don't believe you, who realize that their TV lies to them, have no alternate, more accurate source of truth...they have only their skepticism. And they can't communicate it to others, because they don't own a TV station, and you can use yours to call them crazy conspiracy theorists.

Or racists. Whatever.

But when you introduce a many-to-many communications tech into the mix, things change.

Now you cannot control the narrative by seizing a few central points, and when you get your message out there, you do not do so without fear of contradiction. You can be fact-checked, and an alternate narrative can be presented, by literally anyone who pays ninety bucks a month for an internet connection.

Deception is a lot less effective on this new medium. If you wish to gain power through it, you must rule by persuasion. This means not controlling what facts are presented, but instead controlling how those facts are interpreted. This is done by creating a compelling, persuasive narrative that strings those facts together into explanations for how the world works, and plans for how it might work.

And in a world that is split between few-to-many, and many-to-many, communications, deception and persuasion become alternate paths to power.

This has caused a split between leader (and wannabe leaders) based on which style they are adept at using.

This is why the parties have been replaced from the inside out and are reshuffling.

The elites, those who have the money and power to control few-to-many media, have seized control of the democrats and created neo-democrats, the party of television.

The neo-democrat path to power is to control the media.

Seize control of a platform using wealth, power, and connections, and allow only your version of the facts to be told. Then construct an alternate set of facts that implies that voting for you is an imperative.

Global warming is gonna kill us all.
Trump is the reincarnation of Hitler.
Women are being refused life-saving medical interventions in ectopic pregnancies.
Diversity is our greatest strength.
Vast numbers of kids are born the wrong sex, and we must surgically modify them.

Who are the constituents of the neo-democrats, the ones whose interests they serve?

The elites. It could be otherwise. Since they are dependent on few-to-many media to get their message out, they must cater to those who can afford them that access, either directly or financially.

This is why all the pop-record label singers and Hollywood actors were telling you to vote democrat. Their allegiance to the neo-democrats was an inevitable consequence of their dependence upon few-to-many media.

This is why Fox is also aligning with the neo-democrats, despite being traditionally affiliated with the old republican party. They have to. They are a television network. The future of many-to-many media has no role for them.

Same with the Manhattan-based tradpub book industry, and numerous other old media from the 20th century.

They simply have to be neo-democrat, because the neo-republican future has no place for them.

So who are the neo-republicans?

The republican party has been seized by wealthy and prominent mavericks... those who don't own or control media, but who have money or power because they have an unusual skill... tech investment, brand building, internet marketing, whatever.

The neo-republican path to power is to shape the narrative.

They don't own TV stations, so they must speak on the internet.

Since they speak on the internet, they cannot speak without fear of contradiction.

Since they cannot speak without fear of contradiction, they cannot invent their own facts that support their positions.

Instead, they must invent stories that resonate with people, and convince people to interpret the facts their way.

This set of problems you experience in your life are due to these things. Vote for us and we will do this other thing instead, and that will lead to this other result.

See how this all makes sense? See how it all fits a narrative? Let's do this, this, and this, and we'll make America great again.

This is why Donald Trump, a lifelong democrat, had to run as a republican, despite the fact that his platform is pretty much John Kennedy 2.0.

Because he didn't have control over few-to-many media, and those who had it weren't going to let him in. But he did have a lifetime of experience as a highly successful brand-builder and deal negotiator.

So he had to be a neo-republican.

That's why many of his supporters are former democrats as well... all the ones who rose through skill or charisma. The neo-democrats have no need of such characters, since they are about platform control.

And this is why the old-style republican powers, such as the Cheneys, are reshuffling to the neo-democrats.

Because deception is their strategy... remember Iraq and their fictional nukes? They have no power to persuade, and no role in a future where power depends upon charisma and narrative persuasion.

And this is why the Obama-centered era of neo-democrat ascendancy (2008-2016)was characterized by internet censorship.

The neo-democrats were attempting to make the internet into a few-to-many medium, so they could use their platform control strategy of deception.

When the neo-republicans began to break through the censorship by routing around it, they were able to deploy their strategy of persuasion, and start to win.

The neo-democrats "won" the 2020 election because their strategy, venue control, worked for them — the platform, in this case, being the vote counters.

The neo-republicans won the 2024 election because they crippled (perhaps temporarily) the venue control of the neo-democrats, and then deployed their superior persuasion capabilities.

The neo-democrats cannot craft appealing narratives because the inability to craft appealing narratives is what defines them as neo-democrats.

They are the alliance of people who must control the venue because they cannot persuade. This is why they represent the Machine.

Because only the Machine can allow them control of the venue.

They are the people who cannot build a power base on their own merits, so they must serve the Machine or they will have no power.

In the video below, we see what happens when neo-democrats attempt to craft narratives and persuade.

This woman claims to be a tech expert, and tells us a story about how Elon Musk and Starlink fixed the 2024 election.

Her problem is, she's using the internet as if it were a few-to-many medium.

She's speaking as if she were on television, and could lie without anyone else being allowed on that television to contradict her.

She's not a computer expert. And what she's saying is not even wrong, it's gibberish. To be wrong it would first have to have a thesis, and that thesis would have to make sense.

I don't know if this story sounds okay to a layman, but to any software engineer, sysadmin, or even electrical engineer, she sounds like Gene Ray the Time Cube Guy.

She doesn't know what any of these terms mean. She doesn't even pronounce a lot of them correctly. And the way she hooks them together looks like somebody gluing recognizable bits from an electronics catalogue to a D-list actor's face for a super-low-budget cyberpunk movie.

When neo-democrats venture onto the open internet, they don't know how to craft narratives, because they aren't used to being called on their bullshit.

Make no mistake, the 2024 vote split broke into People Who Believe What Their TV Tells Them vs. People Who Look Shit Up On The Internet.

By the very nature of their allegiance to legacy tech, the neo-democrats are doomed... unless they can control the internet, or the vote counters.

The neo-republicans must focus on protecting those two systems.

[Abundant Housing Vancouver @ahvancouver]

Hot of the press, our 2024 platform comparison!
https://t.co/yEtRkAD7tW

[Richard Zussman @richardzussman]

BC Conservative John Rustad told a group earlier this year he wishes he never got the COVID-19 vaccine and believes Dr. Henry mandated vaccine in order to ‘control the population’, the Conservatives have promised to fire Dr. Henry if elected. #bcpoli

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

devastating.

[μπερναμπέο @bernabeo2022]

Όλο η ψηφιακή κατάσταση της ανθρωπότητας από το 2006 και μετά

[Taj Ali @Taj_Ali1]

Justice for Grenfell. 72 people lost their lives in this preventable tragedy. Victims of corporate greed and institutional neglect.

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

#VanRE

[Paul E Williams @PEWilliams_]

Interesting—the OECD country where people are least dissatisfied with housing is Japan. Is there anyone on this site who knows why that is?

[David Rowe @mrdavidrowe]

'Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like – such as reading to your little boy... keeps the Devil down in the hole.'
Nick Cave.

[Kate Clanchy @KateClanchy1]

'Refugee' is no one's ambition. Mohamed was 13 and from Syria

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

Macklemore wins the rap battle this week..

[Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @JPHilllllll]

Wait. Macklemore just dropped Hind’s Hall.

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

@424ds I lived in this building, with views of the port and the mountains and the city; and it was magical.

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

"Computer says no..."

[MIT CSAIL @MIT_CSAIL]

An IBM slide from 1979.

[Khelsilem @Khelsilem]

“What chafes critics, even those who might consider themselves progressive, is that they expect reconciliation to instead look like a kind of reversal, rewinding the tape of history to some museum-diorama past.” https://t.co/xIcRKFH3ni

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

Check out Breakfast Television's video! #TikTok yes to this #canadiansoccer https://t.co/iUkNdY6hhq

[Jonathan Anthony @ThisMuchWeKnow]

brilliant

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

What is it about being British that matters to you?
What is it about being Black that matters to you?
Because those categories contain a lot of really awful people.
Identity's a very important place to start but a terrible place to finish.

@GaryYounge on Race, Racism & Identity: