Upstream #112 For puck sakes and the next web (3.0)

UPSTREAM

Thoughts on marketing, creativity and innovation.
We Are Up is a strategy & innovation consultancy.

Hey. nice to see you again. Knuckle down. Buckle up.......

Gifs by: @ccburton

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle—when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

African Proverb

For pucks sake!

Gretzky skated to where the puck was going to be and all that. Not where it had been. A million f’ing ppt slides told you that. But saying and doing are different things. Shutterstock the stock photography business, just spent $75m on TurboSquid (a digital media company that sells CGI photos) suggesting their future doesn't involve cameras. They get it. AI can already create images from text descriptions (look at GT3 & DALL-E). They see where the pucks headed.

Uber follow the puck too. They just bought alcohol delivery service Drizly for $1.1b. A big bet on a future of a one stop delivery app. An Uber for everything. Uber, Instacart and the rest, are branching out from one area — getting people or groceries to their destination — into delivering restaurant food, prescription drugs, home goods, pet food, convenience store items and now booze. Move one thing. Move every-thing.

And video games have replaced music as the most important aspect of youth culture. The global video gaming industry took in an estimated $180bn last year, more than sports and movies worldwide. Which needs to sink in a bit. Even though it's an odd year or two, it's still pretty seismic. Because, you know, the yoof are the puck and gaming continues to grow up. Good reminder that you can't be a prisoner of the past or the present. The puck, is always moving.

The next web (3.0)

Something’s happening. Bubbling up. Gaining momentum. Tim Cook’s recent speech in Brussels for International Data Privacy Day (well worth reading) is part of it. He calls out Facebook (without naming them), and privacy and data extraction in general. Feels like a moment. He says, "Too many are still asking the question 'How much can we get away with?' when they need to be asking 'What are the consequences?’. There's a crack in the dam.

While the web is undoubtedly useful, questions grow about its ownership and how it's operated. People are looking at rebuilding a better internet. This (long) piece on the open metaverse was great. It focusses on the Web3 and a more decentralized evolution of what we know now. Built on top of crypto-economic networks, NFT's (Non Fungible Tokens) and Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”), the Web3 may wrest power from the large corporations that today dominate it and give it back to the people.

As this piece on the Internet 3.0 by Stratechery suggests it will take years and it’s a part of a broader movement that rallies against centralized ownership and involves intervention and widespread regulation.

The Post Social Media Era is a part of this too (a great piece). An era, that will reshape how we might create, and manage communities on the internet. An era that will be marked by platforms with more distributed ownership, more intentional members and more subscription based models that serve the communities better, with more conscious consumption.

Something is happening. Can you see it too? Change is slow, then all at once.

Listening: On his 5 year anniversary (just past), the BBC put together this incredible audio documentary for Bowie. A thinker, seer and prophet. Throughout his life, he predicted the future. He was a visionary artist whose natural fluidity, curious imagination and disregard for the rigidity of categories enabled him to foretell cultural change. Great listen, lots to learn. Enjoy.