Friend works for real estate group that provides consulting services for companies looking to move into a new area.
Friend can drag a box around any area down to the block and see how many people visit that area, what part of the city they came from to get there, where they went to next, average income, etc etc etc
We all know we are being tracked but seeing him use his software was still shocking. Apparently all data is from 3rd party apps and they charge $30k++ for their real estate analysis service. Who knows how much they pay for the actual data or how many times over it’s sold. It’s all anonymous but adding just a small bit of information about an individual and pretty easy to figure out and track them even off this anonymized 3rd party data.
The book - Fabric of Civilization takes an informative dive on what happened as cotton/wool fabric technology evolved and different bottle necks in the process changed, along with who was compensated more and who lost their jobs in the process.
I didn't read that book but remember the topic a bit. But things have changed, a lot less people back in the days and a lot more limited technological capabilities.. now tech can really cover most of what people do. There's a shift IMO.
Know a few “pot lawyers” and retail operators. The real money is in gaining a license for a dispensary. Growing is a race to the bottom. From humboldt era $5k lbs to $800 lbs
Money is not evil, but the abstraction of “value” in modern life does cause the problems he blames money for.
Perhaps the jungle/forest tribes way of life is the best and simple way we can be happy. Yet tent communes like Johnston’s seem to be setup in the middle of a town square or within close proximity of a city, and not in nature somewhere actually sustaining themselves.
In the end if we blew it all up we would arrive back to same evolution of living we find ourselves in today.
Judd made Marfa and died before it ever became what it was today. Secretive group of artists and the like came later and in the end, all good towns need an industry and Marfa’s real industry is tourism of people coming to see the art and related art that has sprung up.
Even terralingua has a restaurant with a two hour wait now. Tourism is the only real driver of a small town booming imo.
Marfa also does not have a lot of services that are needed for anyone older than 50, like a hospital.
a friend from the area insists that judd was involved in drug trafficking and that the (frankly mundane) art was a pretense or money laundering mechanism. i've spent time in the region and it is not difficult to spot people who are obviously involved.
the same friend's relative was recently interviewed for a soon-to-be-released podcast about the former sheriff of presidio, who was recently released from a multi-decade bid for bringing heroin over the border in his official trailer and putting it on trains hauling cattle feed to houston: https://www.presidiosheriff.com/
Package up a gimmick in a decent looking kiosk and pitch the “where won’t this work!?” dream. You’ll capture enough imagination in pitch meetings to raise a few mil. You’ll put together a team and manufacture your first batch, spending all of your first raise in the process. A few big name clients will pop-up and show interest, enough to go back to your investors for a just a bit more money to keep going. Big name clients do some one off deals, everyone is interested but if it could just do X or Y, you’ll chase custom requests and eventually arrive at the crossroads of becoming an event based marketing agency or riding a slowly fading business into the ground as the kiosks age and no new clients sign up after the hype is over.
Whether it’s touch screen mirrors, digital art club screens, cell phone charging kiosks, photo booths, sports training kiosks, screens on water faucets, it’s inevitably the same story arch.
The only ones I’ve seen that make money are those that pivot into high-ticket custom events which then you’re not a scalable startup anymore but an agency, or you barely get your investors bailed out by selling some backend tech you developed for stock in another company.
On that note, why aren't there more touch screen mirrors? Of all of these, that ones makes a certain amount of sense (being a 'screen' we already look at at least a few times a day). I've only ever seen the DIY ones, never a proper product.
That is how innovation progresses. These folks who burn weekends and evenings, often they fail. Many of them get up and go on to build something bigger for the society.
Is there something we're missing here? It seems fairly credible, and if it's enough like a hologram, that novelty will not fade, it represents quite a leap in communications (though will probably take some time to settle in).
Ok - fair enough - but people don't care about 'what tech is used' what they care about is the experience.
So if you can create a really powerful '3D experience' using simple tech, than that's wonderful. That said, if it's crappy or doesn't work well from angles or whatever then that's not good either.
But let's not get confused in arguing about 'what a real hologram is' - because that's now what we really want, what we want is the 3D there may be other ways to achieve it.
