In his book The Zero Marginal Cost Society, Jeremy Rifkin argues that technology will make certain goods free or incredibly cheap in the future, and that entertainment and media have been the first industries to experience the effects of what he calls the “near-zero maginal cost phenomenon.”

A postcapitalist Canary Wharf…

The Isle of Dogs under conditions of tech abundance

It sits there glinting its Thatcherite message across the London skyline. Up close its manicured gardens howl: they’re just a disguise for air-conditioning vents…

Excellent piece, Tim. Congrats.
However, we should not forget that for every economic transaction there is a corresponding social transaction (that most of the times precedes it and is the reason it exists at all). When you call an Uber instead of calling a taxi, you are making a different economic choice to enact the same social transaction, in this…

All terribly involved and paradoxical issues you raise and I can only offer examples of similar patterns you describe or analogies with other aspects of our current phase of …of..globalization?…late capitalism…?imperium.? transnationalism.. ? Corporatacracy…? One World Government Conspiracy?… I give up, but describing or even putting some kind of…

I’m with you on that. There’s an insanity to it I suspect…

I was at someone’s house and the kids were using a powerwasher to get rid of the lichen off the stonework. I couldn’t help but ask, “why are you doing that?”

They said it was because they wanted to do something useful. It didn’t look any…

An epiphany

Just think about it: when machines can build self-driving cars on their own (and they will), the cost of producing a car will be the cost of the materials in it. Not a cent more. Which means that the marginal cost will be zero and the production of automobiles will no longer be a profitable business. An…