superuser2

>1) My friend has one

Having your product out in the world with a brand name on it is a form of advertising, and it works really well because people don't recognize it as such.

Some people do recognize it, which is why they'll do stuff like de-badge their cars, to avoid being an agent of the "my friend has one" or "I saw one" form of advertising. My grandparents found this terrifyingly insidious and tried to be cognizant of and reject it whenever possible. Now we all wear logos without a second thought.

>3) I was at the store a while back, browsing around (of my own volition), and learned about them

Manufacturers jockey with retailers for prominent shelf space (or shelf space at all) as part of their advertising efforts.

Similarly, a storefront with signage in a heavily (foot) trafficked area is one of the most expensive (per impression) ad placements that money can buy.

Sure it does. Advertising is the flow of information about what products and services are available, how much they cost, and where to purchase them. Some are crass, some are subtle, some are sprayed, some are targeted, and the very best (personal recommendations and such) aren't even paid for. They are all advertisements.

How will people know where or how to buy what they want without advertising?

If you believe the human experience before modern technology and economics was good enough, why aren't you living it? What in the world are you doing on a computer?

Yes, many people lived and died in an era when there was no time for economic activity beyond extracting dinner from local fauna or the land. The process by which they first learned about and acquired farm implements, giving them the time to do other things, is called advertising.

> people won't stop wanting things that make their life better, and in general will continue to buy such things.

This is nonsensical.

You can only buy something if you know that it exists for sale and where.

The process by which you acquire this information is, by definition, advertising.

Most of us are employed producing goods and services for which people are not born with an innate desire.

Approximately the only people who can bash advertising without hypocrisy are subsistence farmers. The rest of us are paid to satisfy artificially inseminated needs. Perhaps our specific industries and employers use classier, higher-quality, and more subtle forms of advertisement, but in a truly ad-free world, we'd not spend money on anything but staying fed, warm, and reproductive.

Original content by Netflix and Amazon is produced by the same companies, people, and tools as the rest of Hollywood's output, just for a different distribution system.

Forget exhaust, this is the real air quality problem.

We have this, it's called SMTP and IMAP.

If you feel (as I do) that they haven't sufficiently adapted to the current era, why do you think any other open protocol would be able to change more easily?

The prevailing winds in the regulatory climate do not seem to point towards a skyscraper construction boom anytime soon.

Over in technology, we're rapidly marching towards cheap household-scale solar panels and batteries, commodity autonomous driving technology, and cheap electric cars. Elon Musk's satellite constellation will deliver decent internet service regardless of the population density/economics needed to support fibre buildout. Telepresence is already good and keeps getting better.

The society coming down the line is one made of energy-independent prefab houses with no particular constraints on location (so they'll go to where land is cheapest), drastically improved freeway throughput (autonomous cars can pack much more densely), and car interiors not much different from small apartments (you'll be able to eat, sleep, and work while the computer drives).

So, as it gets easier to live farther from work, the economic incentives for everyone to cluster into a few square miles will diminish greatly.

How would you compare it to code review at a medium to large tech company? At work there's certainly a lot of back and forth but it never feels hostile, and I usually learn something.

This started well before "social media" was a thing. Newspapers weren't done in by Twitter, but by their own online editions, and by Google unseating them as the best place to advertise.

All it takes is a coup of a nuclear-armed nation, and the barrier to entry on that project keeps dropping as states with a recent history of fanatic-deposes-weaker-fanatic coups join the club.

The scary part is that a DAO could actually do this.

And people wonder why developers flock from "real" businesses to Silicon Valley.