Forget Surveillance Capitalism. Think Parasite Culture
October 15, 2024
Ted Gioia touts himself as The Honest Broker on his blog and he recently posted about the current state of the economy: “Are We Now Living In A Parasite Culture?” In the opening he provides examples of natural parasites before moving to his experience working with parasite strategies.
Gioia said that when he consulted fortune 500 companies, he and others used parasite strategies as thought exercises. Here’s what a parasite strategy is:
1. “You allow (or convince) someone else to make big investments in developing a market—so they cover the cost of innovation, or advertising, or lobbying the government, or setting up distribution, or educating customers, or whatever. But…
2. You invest your energy instead on some way of cutting off these dutiful folks at the last moment—at the point of sale, for example. Hence…
3. You reap the benefits of an opportunity that you did nothing to create.”
On first reading, it doesn’t seem that our economy is like that until he provides true examples: Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, and Google. All of these platforms are nothing more than a central location for people to post and share their content or they aggregate content from the Internet. These platforms thrive off the creativity of their users and their executive boards reap the benefits, while the creators struggle to rub two cents together.
Smart influencers know to diversify their income streams through sponsorship, branding, merchandise, and more. Gioia points out that the Forbes lists of billionaires includes people who used parasitical business strategies to get rich. He continues by saying that these parasites will continue to guzzle off their hosts’ lifeblood with a chance of killing said host.
Its happening now in the creative economy with Big Tech’s investment in AI and how, despite lawsuits and laws, these companies are illegally training AI on creative pursuits. He finishes with the obvious statement that politicians should be protecting people, but that they’re probably part of the problem. No duh.
Whitney Grace, October 15, 2024
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
