Seeing a lot of comments disputing singular data points, but the author goes out of his way to provide as wide a variety of data points as he could find, and to try to disprove his own theory.
A couple anecdotal things I've noticed in my own life that align with his conclusions:
(1) I work in advertising. I've long bemoaned that my industry has turned to producing high-production low-creativity work for decades now. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, people relied on creativity to get a message across. But today, it's all polish and no substance. I assumed it was because technology made it easier than ever to to do so, but maybe it's part of a wider trend.
(2) I used to love the variety of car designs. Every car was unique. Some were crazy. But today, take the logo off, and I'd be challenged to tell the difference between any two pickup trucks or any two sedans or any two vans. Every manufacturer has converged on the exact same design. (We see this in every industry, I just happened to be a fan of cars back in the day. But if you look at housing, clothing, computers, phones, tablets, etc etc, I can't think of any category that has real variety in design.)
(3) The author mentions book covers. Up until today, I was mistaking all those designs as meaning those books were part of the same series or something. I hadn't dug in to realize they were actually unrelated.
(4) My own kids have played it incredibly safe. I'm proud of them for being more responsible than I ever was. But I'm also worried they don't know how to take risks. I'm strongly of the belief that anything worth doing involves a healthy dose of risk. Could it really be that as a society, we've just abandoned risk?
I'm not saying the article is necessarily 100% correct. But I think it does pose what may be one of the most important questions of our era. Yeah yeah, I know that sounds bombastic: we have increasing global conflicts, a climate crisis, the apparent rise of neo-fascism, etc. But I don't know how we're going to solve those problems if we're all driving into the middle. How can 8 billion people be more homogenous than the 7, 6, 5, 4 billion that came before?
> Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
A couple anecdotal things I've noticed in my own life that align with his conclusions:
(1) I work in advertising. I've long bemoaned that my industry has turned to producing high-production low-creativity work for decades now. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, people relied on creativity to get a message across. But today, it's all polish and no substance. I assumed it was because technology made it easier than ever to to do so, but maybe it's part of a wider trend.
(2) I used to love the variety of car designs. Every car was unique. Some were crazy. But today, take the logo off, and I'd be challenged to tell the difference between any two pickup trucks or any two sedans or any two vans. Every manufacturer has converged on the exact same design. (We see this in every industry, I just happened to be a fan of cars back in the day. But if you look at housing, clothing, computers, phones, tablets, etc etc, I can't think of any category that has real variety in design.)
(3) The author mentions book covers. Up until today, I was mistaking all those designs as meaning those books were part of the same series or something. I hadn't dug in to realize they were actually unrelated.
(4) My own kids have played it incredibly safe. I'm proud of them for being more responsible than I ever was. But I'm also worried they don't know how to take risks. I'm strongly of the belief that anything worth doing involves a healthy dose of risk. Could it really be that as a society, we've just abandoned risk?
I'm not saying the article is necessarily 100% correct. But I think it does pose what may be one of the most important questions of our era. Yeah yeah, I know that sounds bombastic: we have increasing global conflicts, a climate crisis, the apparent rise of neo-fascism, etc. But I don't know how we're going to solve those problems if we're all driving into the middle. How can 8 billion people be more homogenous than the 7, 6, 5, 4 billion that came before?
> Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
> Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
> Brian: You're all different!
> Crowd: Yes, we are all different!
> Man in crowd: I'm not...
> Crowd: Shhh!