The age of the last mover

Written By Dawie Diamond

We are in the age of the last movers. The first episode of the Flintstones, which can be seen here, cost approximately $670,204.12 (when adjusting for inflation). It took an entire year before the studio settled on a final design. And then they started on the episodes. The Flintstones is a generated abstraction of reality, and, by today's standards, not a very good one.

Consider this music video of The Matrix cast singing "Ice Ice Baby" which I stumbled upon while reading Seth Godin's blog. This was generated using AI, probably at close to zero cost, and in a couple of days (I'm speculating here). The cover is also a generated abstraction of reality, but a near-perfect one.

I am working on a theory - which is mostly a restatement of things I've been reading about. I call this theory "The age of the last mover". The theory starts with the following statement:

Any result that can be produced by an algorithm is going to have the following three attributes in the not-so-distant future:

  • The result will be produced in approximately no time

  • The result is going to be produced virtually cost free

  • The result can be produced an infinite geographical distance from the traditional hubs of innovation

Nothing in this ☝ statement is particularly new, but I am only embracing it now. In the coming posts, I am going to explore this theme.

Dawie Diamond https://www.dawiediamond.com
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