What Comes After the Hipster?
The subculture is dead. Long live the subculture!

Subcultures usually form in response to some sort of perceived cultural conformity or hegemony. For me, today, that’s technology and the Internet, and in a way, some of today’s hipsters participate in some activities that try to eschew modernity (craft food and spirits, knitting, canning, etc.). However, I can’t see a youth subculture forming to react against modern technology, since it has become so intertwined with modern life.

The hipster has been around as the dominant youth culture for way longer than anything that’s come before, and it occupies a place relative to mainstream culture that’s completely different. It’s not counter-cultural; it fits perfectly within the values of a large part of the mainstream

Hipsters are usually seen as consumers — “self-curators” who painstakingly select the music, movies, clothing and so on through which they construct their identities. More useful is to understand them as producers and distributors. Hipsters create Bobo culture. They make or sell or serve, or simply pioneer, what Bobos buy.

[Youth subcultures] now form more around preferences than broad ideologies.

What Comes After the Hipster?

Digital Disruptions in Healthcare/Sickcare

Vinod Khosla is not the first to describe a massively disruptive digital solution to the antiquated and unsustainable healthcare (sickcare) system in its current form. Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity folks have offered visions that reach beyond what Khosla proposes. But that’s what makes Khosla’s proposal so tantalizing. He’s offering a more or less coherent vision for an intermediary step on the way to the Singularity.

The Kids are Alright

Nice piece in the NYTimes on Danah Boyd’s work advocating on behalf of teens’ needs for online space.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Teenagers absolutely care about privacy,” Dr. Boyd said, adding that like adults, they share things to feel loved, connected and supported. “Teenagers are not some alien population. When we see new technologies, we think they make everything different for young people. But they really don’t. Teenagers are the same as they always were.”

Divergent / Convergent phases of ideation were one of the most useful concepts I learned in design school. The Divergent phase is where you brainstorm ideas with an aim for quantity. The Convergent phase is where the cacophony of brainstormed ideas are filtered by quality, relevance, resonance, etc. This is analogous to the inhale/exhale of a breath — both are essential and sequential.
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Divergent / Convergent phases of ideation were one of the most useful concepts I learned in design school.

The Divergent phase is where you brainstorm ideas with an aim for quantity. The Convergent phase is where the cacophony of brainstormed ideas are filtered by quality, relevance, resonance, etc.

This is analogous to the inhale/exhale of a breath — both are essential and sequential.