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Our 'new' Data Finance capitalism ("data is the new oil" blah blah blah) does nothing so well as it homogenizes opinion into the Optimum Revenue Stream.

It's possible that's why much modern music sounds the same, one must have the new "it" website format to be relevant, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseam ...

Fads and fashions used to propagate more slowly, so that that there was some variety in style and personality. Now it seems everybody is walking around with white sticks hanging out of their ears and blank square watches on their wrists. Silicon-valley Self Satisfied Similarity Swag: the 5 S's.

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That's an interesting point about revenue optimization leading to homogenous products (like for example the Marvel movie franchise and Disney's sequels upon sequels)

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I once asked a professor what communism was good at; she replied: preserving traditions. She meant, I believe, that the poor rural folk in eastern Europe had little else to fall back on than what they always knew. Capitalism by contrast devours and homogenizes as you say and gets to that optimal cultural revenue stream.

I wonder if it'll be the valley's downfall.

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@Will, I did not intend to convey my belief is that capitalism devours and homogenizes, -- at least not exclusively. (There is destruction, bien sur, but also creation, de riguer.) My gripe is with *data/finance* capitalism a.k.a surveillance capitalism. My old libertarian leanings bristle at over-centralization, my interest in robustness (e.g. resilience engineering) has me thinking that in our current state, oligarchic companies have too much power and too much access. Fragile.

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I’d love to hear your perspective on data science consulting!

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Noted thanks!

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