The Predictions Issue + Playlist
"By numbers. By mirrors. By water. By dots made at random on paper".
Hello! I am Fabien, and this is a newsletter with personal writing and opinions about the 21st century, links, and other cultural artefacts. I also curate playlists. I hope you enjoy this work-in-progress. Follow me on Twitter here – hit reply to chat!
Hello 2020!
Hello and happy new year! The internet is funny. Despite new services coming out all the time, the rise and falls of many social media platforms, as well as new messaging apps, good ol’email is still king when it comes to communicating and connecting with people. It’s been a minute since I’ve talked to most of you. In less than a year, I have relocated to 2 different countries, and have become a dad. Now located in Tel Aviv, I work for a cool privacy tech company as content writer and marketing manager. So here we are with this first edition.
2019 was not the simplest of the years, but looking back can’t complain about the beginning of 2020. Sometimes life’s challenges can feel like compound interest: you think you have faced the most difficult, but life keeps on giving you lemons. It’s, in the long run, you start seeing the benefits from the efforts you put in. In a flash, we are already next year. It seems as we could not foresee where we would be today. Yet visionary Jean Cocteau saw it coming in 1962 (I encourage you to watch this inspiring piece):
In eastern philosophies, the universe is governed by the yin and the yang, giving the ultimate balance. It states that all energies have a direction. You go left, right, forward, backward, fall down, get up etc. The only time it does not have a course is in death. Therefore it is of utmost importance to always move forward in all our endeavours. This is what I wish you for this new year.
“If you're reading this... Congratulations, you're alive. If that's not something to smile about, then I don't know what is.”
― Chad Sugg
More than ever before, we need to have the vision, take the right decision and take it fast. Otherwise, we risk getting lost in the tide of time. I am no Nostradamus, but here are my…
2020-2030 predictions
• Privacy tech will take over the world. We are already seeing it with the recent regulations: GDPR in Europe, and CCPA in the US starting this month.
• Art will, unfortunately progressively loses its authentic value due to AI. But also how the consumer de-values it. You can now pay Spotify or Apple $10 a month for the entire history of recorded music. True artists will be rarer. This poses the question of who will carry the nonetheless essential duty of ethics, as the musician, the writer, the painter, make thinking evolve.
• Blockchain technology will revolutionise the world, not only financial systems.
• Welfare systems will continue to get exhausted as the number of people needing support is increasing faster than the number of people paying tax to provide that support.
• As income levels discrepancies drive further apart society, for newer generations, multi-income streams will become unavoidable to survive along with careful financial planning.
• Not news, but somewhere in the mix, we are due for a nice recession. Subprimes are no longer news, but that did not prevent tech companies from buying back their own shares, creating an insane bubble. This falsifies any analysis that can be made as the data is, in a sense, incorrect.
• Value of traditional college education will decrease, partly due to its rising cost (who does not know a young graduate entering the job market already $60k or $100k in debt), but also to the fact that now you can learn everything online.
• As people are becoming more aware of agricultural and health crisis (under their different forms), more people will be turning towards alternative medicine and the alkaline diet (which I will write soon about).
• Nationalism and autarchy will rise (see Brexit). So get these extra passports while you can.
• Solar (and why not green energy) become (hopefully) mainstream.
•Elvis is finally making a come-back… or maybe not… or maybe in a hologram from the multiverse 🕺.
Ok, said like this, most of it might sound a little depressing… But rejoice, the laws of the yin and the yang also say that everything is cyclical! Hit reply to give me your predictions.
Thanks for reading! F.
Cool Links
My work recently published in
“Newborns will have at some point a digital presence. For us the adults, it’s too late. When you post a picture of anyone online you basically give the right to these companies to do whatever they want with that picture and the info linked to it”.
How to preserve your Newborn’s online privacy - Medium / The Ascent
“So you’ve got an idea, and you think it would make a great movie. You’re excited and you sit down to start writing. But soon you get overwhelmed by the realization that you have a great intro, a few good scenes, kind of an idea for the end, and an awesome title. But nothing in between. As a result, the file gets forgotten in the dark abyss of your “document folder”.
How to finish that god d*mn screenplay - Medium / The Writing Cooperative
What I’ve been reading
• Vox / Why we kiss – explained - While it is an act we are all (hopefully) familiar with, it is one of these things that only when you start to think about it you wonder why we are doing. Some will say it is to exchange the same breath, but really its origin is much less sexy.
• Wired / CCPA, what you need to know: For my Cali friends, a new privacy law is in action since January 1st. TLTR, it allows you to finally have some rights regarding how your data is handled, and ask for its deletion if you wish. For those who don’t know, I now work in a cool privacy tech startup in Tel Aviv, which deals just with these new regulations (CCPA and GDPR).
• Duke University: What film/music/words became public domain on January 1st. My favourite? Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
• The Verge / Star Wars: The Star Wars mythology is all about digital censorship. A large chunk of the plots includes a quest for information, while there is a total absence of accountability for politicians. The Rise of Skywalker makes clear that data transfer isn’t the only problem.
Playlist // The Predictions Issue
Opening Subtitle Reference
Suzanne Vega - Predictions