@toxi My predictions:
- Promotion of art which demonstrates process, which includes live performances of course, but also simply "how to" or "making of". Participation, ephemerality, spontaneity, like you said. If you see someone just typing words into a box and mashing things together, it will be judged harshly. Good.
- Increased rejection of digital life, preference for the physical, and all that it entails. Or at least, rejection of tainted transmission media. In this, I am hopeful for the young people.
- Trusted systems attesting to provenance, even if anonymized.
- A possible forking of society, one which still values communication, humanism, and effort; and one which values systems and is self-absorbed
- One I'm particularly worried about: increasing alienation to a breaking point; potentially violence, especially in the US.
Unfortunately, I don't think things are going to get better anytime soon, we are all still getting started rag-dolling down the mountain, especially with so much money and power concentrated in the hands of people who want a systematic, top-down world.
However, we are headed down an unsustainable path and it will come to an end one way or another. I can only hope that people can keep resisting in stronger and increasingly sophisticated ways, dismantling the power imbalance, and building a new society if necessary.