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The system has changed. The capitalism we once knew as predatory and self-indulgent has transcended in certain pockets of society into something new. It is not a utopia by a long shot, but perhaps it is something better…the New Capitalism.

We see it when we go to a library, or Starbucks. The endless sea of laptops connected to the Internet, the concept is so revolutionary that we dismiss it as normal. It is not. Free Wireless Internet is as alien and Science Fiction as having a free to use phone at every table in a coffee shop during the 1980’s. This is a serious game changing service that spawned from the very system that supposedly plans on making a product out of everything.

What it interesting, is that he Free Wireless movement has manifested in different stages. The most clear declaration of Wireless Internet access as something worth examining, was in San Francisco shortly after Mayor Newsom made his historic statement. The decision to turn Union Square into a wi-fi zone was not something entirely new, but it was groundbreaking and historic in its publicity, rhetoric, and over-arching vision.

Starbucks tinkered with the idea of wireless Internet for years. There were monthly plan T-mobile contracts that evolved into the concept of having a registered Starbucks card to enable free wifi for a temporary amount of time. Then finally Starbucks switched entirely into a completely free Wi-Fi access hot spot that only required the clicking of a terms of agreement page. Many argue that this was an evolution of market competition and Starbucks was responding to pressure from other coffee shops that provided free wi-fi. But that argument does not make sense when we take into account the huge market share of the company.

If Starbucks wanted to provide Wireless Internet and charge for it, they could have. All they would have needed to do, was to cut prices. By cutting prices, they could have used an old capitalistic technique of drawing in customers from the competition. But they didn’t do this, and the reason why I think they chose he route that they did was the concept of Starbucks trying to create a comfortable friendly place for people to go to, that wasn’t the office or home.

This type of logic transcends simple concepts of return on investment or market share. This is a new form of capitalism that has roots in an ancient and antiquated form of business…the stake holder. Unlike a stock holder, the stake holder is the community that directly benefits from the existence and operation of a business. And today’s internet using society, is the greater community of stake holders, that benefit from companies that provide Wi-Fi and research and develop advancements in such technology.

These advancements such as free Wi-Fi Hotspots, that benefit the stakeholders are like succulent fruit that sprout from the brambles of Capitalism. It is almost as if, we are experiencing an emergent higher form of socio-economic interaction between business and consumer, as a result of paying into the existing cost-benefit system.

The question remains, if free wireless internet is one of the true benefits of this New Capitalism, what is next? If this system is allowed to mature and develop, what future fruits await this technology hunger culture, that we call Western Civilization?

-Tyler

TV at the GYM is getting intense

I haven’t been to the gym because I was feeling nasally congested and ill. But today when I went, I noticed some interesting changes to the TV programs and the information presented in the news. Today, at around 12:50PM I saw news reports on some interesting things. There was a mother that was arrested for encouraging her child to fist-fight with a neighbor. On another screen there were advertisements of people playing computer games without actually using a mouse or even touching a screen for that matter, they were using some kind of iPad looking tablet device and were moving the cross-hairs (and invariably the spaceship they were controlling) around by simply holding the pad differently. Then when I was a couple minutes into my stair climb, I saw the other screen show how bunkers have gone up in production in the USA. It seems that people are purchasing large bunkers or else paying for a place in one that is leased by a large group. Some of these bunkers were reported to big enough to hold over 900 people and some were even equipped with detention capabilities. That is so ironic that a bunker that is basically an iron prison under the ground would house another prison within it. The should have another box inside the detention area that is equipped with a combination lock that can keep the thoughts of the prisoner.

These images are slightly different from what I saw a couple weeks ago. There were news flashes of unrest in the Middle East and criminals getting beat down. This is daytime television at the gym mind you. At night it is a little different. What I don’t think people realize is that these images are actually suggestions, it isn’t just unbiased information. This article you are reading right now is saturated with suggestions and subliminal nuance. I can’t help but drench my writing with them, it is automatic.

That being said, the people who sit down and watch Television like this are probably the most susceptible to suggestion. The reason for this, is because anyone who can tolerate multiple commercials of 30 seconds or longer in length in a row is not just a good listen, he or she is part of a captive audience.

So can we learn anything from these trends? I’d say that paranoia has changed from a state of mind, into an actual marketable product that has material substance…kind of like, perfume or flavored water.

Remember, peoples’ purchasing and viewing trends and habits CONTROL the commercials and programming on the media. It is not the other way around, which is contrary to popular belief.

To make this more clear, we can engage in a very simple thought experiment. Imagine that you are a business owner that makes frozen ice-cream lumps that are covered in brownies. (I have never heard of such a product but if anyone wants to go into business making this, let’s do it) Ok, so you have this brownie/ice-cream company called, “Brownie Maxx-Bitz” and you want to advertise on television. Most companies don’t just pick one TV program to sell their products, they have at least two shows that they try and get the product advertised on.

So you have Brownie Maxx-Bitz and you decide that you aren’t sure if this new product would be good to promote on an Soap Opera with a demographic of stay at home mom and dads, or an evening action/suspense program with a demographic targeted at young men in their late teens to early thirties . So you decide to put your ads on both. Over a 30 day period you evaluate the progress of the sales of Brownie Maxx-Bitz and determine that the demographic of young men in their late teens to early thirties is purchasing a great deal of the desert snack.

Well guess what, other advertisers noticed that the had better luck selling their products to consumers on programs other than the soap opera also. And what happened is that the actual value of the advertising time for the action/suspense show went up, while the advertising revenue for the soap opera went down. This led to the producers of the action/suspense show to decide to create a spin off of the show called, “Cyber Cop/Omega Tetralox: Generations of Guilt.” The resulting spin-off show was a great success and now entire college communities refer to Browni Maxx-Bitz as Tetra-Gas Blast due to the high fiber content of the brownie mix used in the early versions of the desert snack.

That was a very simple and crude example of how purchasing trends can affect television but it gets the point across.

So when we look at this in conjunction with TV trends while I’m at the gym, we find that paranoia is a very real thing. And it is actually desired by the media observers.

-Tyler