I’ve been brainwashed by all the end-of-year lists into making my own…I couldn’t resist…

6 interesting harbingers in 2007
Some good, some bad, all mysterious

On the pop culture front:
1. Increasing signs of demise of entertainment industry; all hail.
It’s now undeniable: the entertainment industry (music, movies, television, magazines—not including books) is well on its way to complete decentralization. The model seems to be irretrievably broken; no trend or unit of measure indicates real growth. The only way to grow, I’m guessing, is to increase margin, not revenues. Increasing margin means cheapening some aspect of the production pipeline—usually the amount paid to make the product as opposed to how much is paid to wholesale, retail, or market it.

In addition, the days of products created in isolation (behind closed doors) and then marketed through internally selected (and therefore controllable) channels until they arrive at your house are over. Instead of a few stations beaming many signals, with the mastery of digital creation and delivery methods, there are an infinite number of stations beaming out a few signals. I love this trend so much and it is a perfect example of the cyclical nature of all entities. I mean how much bigger can a company like Time Warner get? Or Random House? They’re going to have to start purchasing each other. What else can they do? All I know is that the more the behemoths devour each other, the better it is for humans seeking to express themselves without also having to turn themselves into carnies. It seems the whole megastructure will fracture into a million pieces. Cyclical. It’s bound to happen.

Further. The dividing line between creator and consumer keeps blurring, which is fascinating, unnerving, exciting, inspiring. If today we mostly download the music or shows or magazines we want, tomorrow the uploading will exceed the downloading; i.e. I’ll make my own programming by combining my own sounds and images to make my own entertainment to share with my friends. Social networks really appear to be the entertainment media “companies” of the future.

Whenever anyone says (as they have for the last decade), “we know the internet is the future but we’re just not sure how to monetize it yet,” I cheer because it also means that no one’s figured out how to centralize the creation process. YES. GOOD. Good for musicians, writers, producers, and directors. BAD for the businesses of music, writing, and etc. It’s so weird to have gotten to the state where what’s BAD for the business is GOOD for the product. What kind of nutty management it took to make that happen… Fie.

2. The Writer’s Strike.
I love this one. Writers are trying not to drink the same lemonade that musicians have drunk. All hail. Hang in there. Even though no one knows how digital media will be monetized, we all know it will be…right? Writers appear to be the first group of artists taking the behemoths on which is just one more sign of their weakening position. DON’T GIVE UP. Major implications for the speeding or slowing of the demise of traditional media companies.

3. Merit based retailing.
Oh I love this one too. Not only is it great in and of itself because it’s much easier to know who you’re dealing with (user comments can kill a retailer, whether off- or online), it’s just one more nail in the coffin of “marketing” which is code for “lying to you about what our product or service is to get you to buy it.” Case in point: Vonage, the evil, evil , VILE Vonage. If you watch the commercials they’ll have you believe that there is a happy nation of hip and quirky people who are sticking it to the man by switching to VOIP and paying jack for it. HA! If you google “Vonage sucks” you’ll get 5700 results. “Vonage is awesome”? 924. “Love Vonage”? 2190. “Hate vonage”? 2170. I mean come on. The jury is out at best. In a shocking cultural development, your product or service actually has to be good in order for people to buy it.

On the culture culture front:

4. Red vs Blue?
It seems like the whole red state vs blue state has sunk back into the quicksand from which it arose. There really isn’t any such thing, for goodness sake. The divide, to me, is more like people who buy into the lunacy of processed food, art, education, etc and people who know it’s a total lie. It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat. It does however matter if you know you’re being lied to or you don’t.

5. God is still great, however he’s no longer a great marketing tool.
It really seems like the current slate of Presidential candidates are not playing the God card for all it’s worth, Mitt “Ken Doll” Romney notwithstanding. Somehow these people got the message that we’re just not that stupid. Piety is not the single most important arbiter of political acumen, nor is—cue French people rolling their eyes—marital hijinks. And forget about race and gender. That we’re not even commenting on the magnitude of having a mixed race and a female frontrunner is just another astonishing testimony to our lack of stupidity.

Also of note: the number of influential (not to mention best selling books published on the negative impact of organized religion on social issues (”The End of Faith”, “The God Delusion”, “God is Not Great”.)

6. Shocking lack of emerging leadership.
There are a lot of hopeful signs on the horizon, but it’s still astonishing that no one has appeared to galvanize the enormous, pervasive, undeniable, shocked, sad sense that things are not going well. Our president has lied (or been “wrong”) repeatedly. We’ve been massively, massively duped (or insanely led) and now, among other things, our planet is in urgent danger. Where are the sense-talking, boundary-crossing, soul-unifying leaders? Why aren’t we hearing their voices? Please arise from space.