Carrying the Torch of the World's Greatest Era

No Honey, it's absolutely not a midlife crisis, it's so much more

Although I’m very much at a cross roads, on the one side, vehemently maintaining that AI can’t hold a candle to my ability to identifying and explore problems, I’m both aware and beginning to use the tools to help me be better. I cannot put in as much work or do tasks either as quickly or accurately as AI, so if I don’t use the tools, I’m both falling behind, but also spending more of my life doing mundane stuff than I have to; I don’t want to waste my time. The worry is that if the trajectory continues as it is doing, there will be a point when almost every task can be replaced by AI and I have to hope that some politician somewhere has put a law in place that means I’m able to get a share of the AI overlord’s spoils. Unfortunately, this is the socialists and the communist utopia they always speak of, and 1) this will be a boring, painful existence but 2) I have bitcoin, so I don’t need to rely of fiat handouts, so I can turn my concerns and attention elsewhere.

So, big picture is sort of important, worth giving attention to, maybe buy the odd faraday case and keeping a book or two of important information to help me restart a civilisation (h/t Lewis Dartnell), but broadly, such changes would be so existential, it’s probably not worth losing too much sleep over such futures. Given the law of averages, if 90% of the world’s population is wiped out, there is a good chance I’ll be taken out, hmmm, maybe I SHOULD dig a bunker, just in case. Before I allow such thoughts of societal calamity to take over completely, within a scenario where I’m left, with my bitcoin, in a land where a good chunk of the population have been plugged into some sort of dopamine simulation (see Mandibles), I reckon attention can be focused in different ways. The AI being better than all of us, was last week attacked from an interesting alternate perspective, that has been on the cards for a while. I like cars. I really like cars. My second (although technically me first) car was a Porsche 924, yes, the VW bread van, it took a bit to start, but the way it slid on a corner as I left work on Friday afternoon was actual “chef’s kiss”. The video of the Tesla Rdstr basically rewrote what everyone thought a car could do, Ludacris mode has refined how quickly even people carriers can accelerate, but watching slightly lengthier YouTube videos about this car, if speed is what you want, this has literal rocket boosters to make it go more quickly around a track. If fast is what you want, even Ferrari is now shit out of luck, but, I’m not sure I care about going faster than anyone has ever gone in a car before, firstly, I don’t want to die when I inevitably lose control, and secondly, I’d actually quite like to lose control, as I slide around a corner with no an AI driving assistant.

So, from this position, I’m then reminded of something I saw on the way to dropping the eldest at school on Friday, a 1992 VolkWagon Scirocco. Now quite an old car, based on modern performance figures, very slow, based on modern levels of comfort, not very, based on modern car related amenities, well, maybe a radio, and hopefully an upgraded CD player, but not much else. And so, the question landed on me from the heavens; is that not enough? I look at my own car, and realise I could probably get a zero percent loan on the very latest Chinese manufactured “assemblage” of cultural design cues, this from a Porsche, this from a BM, something else from a Lotus, but where is the soul? Where is the heritage? On paper, from an environmental perspective, from a cost perspective, even from a safety perspective, a BYD (or which ever other ridiculous name) is absolutely the logical choice, if we’re the holders of the world’s future world reserve currency, maybe we don’t have to take the sensible option, and maybe that is absolutely fine.

A car is not simply a mode of transport, well for me anyway, and while I don’t want to be defined completely by the car I drive, I like to think, if you have a choice and some options, the car you drive is also a reflection of the amount of attention you give to such decisions. I listen to a colleague at work telling me about plugging in his LeapMotor hemight get on finance, and I wonder where’s the love in that decision. Maybe I’m not currently driving the Porsche of my previous years, but I’ve been driving the car I paid cash for, for over 11 years, and went for the slightly more powerful option, with a boot that was able to fit both the family’s luggage AND the dog’s travel case. It was the result of a careful process of consideration. But now, as we begin to progress into the inevitable fiat system collapse, where either bitcoin starts experiencing a gravitational pull of the moon, or all assets are more actually, trending to zero against bitcoin, there will be many things bitcoiners will be able to do.

Yes, we’ll all be able to buy Mac Studios, with 100Gb of Ram, to run the mother of all open source, privacy focused clankers to develop digital businesses and webservices than generate income, but what about the real world, analogue experiences of the past? We can take a view of this being where we begin to live out our dreams of the past, where we get a Diablo, Countach or something slightly more tasteful, like a RX7 (h/t @hodlonaut) or a 968, but if we are then to keep these away from the world, similar to how we keep our sats in cold storage isn’t that missing the point?

Such analogue oddities of the past are to be driven, enjoyed, experienced but also shared with others. They are not simply treasures to the caressed, but artefacts of a by gone age, to be shared with the next generation, to share the experiences of the past with those who have only known digital currencies or electric cars (what is the noise from the rear of the car dad?). While absolutely personal preference, the idea of purchasing a car, possible similar to that Scirocco, and then working on it, improving it, making it better, but not necessarily making it modern, sounds so right. The current trend of Porsche, or choose to older exotica, restomods is something I love, but when the donor car starts off at £100k plus, it is a lot of money/sats, but also, it misses out of the richness of our motoring past. Buying a lesser known, but also beautifully designed 80’s or 90’s coupes, and then spending the theoretical change or maybe half of it, of the donor car’s theoretical £100k price tag and it could be a very interesting project. Yes, you would never be able to recoup what you put in, but as above, let’s not try and be too rational by attempting to make the numbers add up. What would this project add to the cultural capital of everyone who saw you driving around in an exquisitely finished 2+2, as I so often do, to quote the Joker, “it’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message”. This time, the message is; we have a past, we can enjoy that past, we could drive a car that is infinitely more reliable, but we choose the option that makes us feel a little more alive.

But this actually doesn’t have to be some type of isolated endeavour or even some type of scrap heap challenge, where we need to scour scrap heaps to find old models to dismantle to keep out prides and joys running for another week. As there becomes a group, potentially some type of critical mass, combined with developments in advanced manufacturing techniques, and who knows, maybe a little AI as well, we could begin helping our interest spread a little wider. Rather than outsourcing the complete design and development of a new car to some black box overseas exotica, we could begin working with technicians, engineers and AI operatives to design, development and make replacement parts. The restomod crowd could stop being the reserve of the megarich, rather those with modern antiques may be able to find suppliers able to replicate spare parts, but not simply replicate, but redesign and improve, to make the original models just that little bit better. At the same time, the wealth of the holders of the new global asset of choice are not simply paying for the prized new motor, but also building a network of organisations, all looking back to the greatness of the 90’s, while simultaneously with an eye on the future, within a web of similarly minded individuals. We may appreciate the cars we choose to drive are a little more physical that their modern counterpart, but we can still enjoy the greater comfort, grip or safety from improved A/C, brakes, tyres and suspension of more modern compounds and componentry.

Having begun to both think more about and write on the idea of developing a craft, this idea has similarities with this perspective on cars, but also art, houses, skills, all sorts of things really. If we are no longer slaves to the fiat machine, always attempting to maximise our outputs, maybe we can take a step back and think about how our choices and decisions reflect the type of person we are and how we want our decisions to impact others. I don’t want people to come into my beige and grey, Ikea furnished house. I want them to see the effort and decisions I’ve made about every item, the pictures on the walls, the desk that once belonged to by Grandfather, and think, “good choice”. There are absolutely alternatives that, on paper, will absolutely outperform the choices I’ve made, but if we always choose the option, that may at times be viewed as a “no brainer”, we will find ourselves in a place where we have chosen ease over the culture that got us where we are.

Jessy Gilger used the phrase “Stack Saturdays, not Sats”, and there will be a point where we can say, “we have enough bitcoin”. At which point, we can look to impact society, but this may not be for everyone, we may be a little selfish, we may want to treat ourselves, and that is absolutely our prerogative. Rather than going for the CyberTruck, that might video your every mov; instead consider something a little more nuanced and tasteful (No offence @Walker or Jessy). Then explore how you can make it better, to help it live longer and impact more people as they see you driving around, and maybe sliding that car around a corner, as you leave your fiat mine for the very last time.Carrying the torch of the world’s greatest Era: No honey, it’s absolutely not a midlife crisis, it’s so much more.

Such analogue oddities of the past are to be driven, enjoyed, experienced but also shared with others. They are not simply treasures to the caressed, but artefacts of a by gone age, to be shared with the next generation, to share the experiences of the past with those who have only known digital currencies or electric cars (what is the noise from the rear of the car dad?). While absolutely personal preference, the idea of purchasing a car, possible similar to that Scirocco, and then working on it, improving it, making it better, but not necessarily making it modern, sounds so right. The current trend of Porsche, or choose to older exotica, restomods is something I love, but when the donor car starts off at £100k plus, it is a lot of money/sats, but also, it misses out of the richness of our motoring past. Buying a lesser known, but also beautifully designed 80’s or 90’s coupes, and then spending the theoretical change or maybe half of it, of the donor car’s theoretical £100k price tag and it could be a very interesting project. Yes, you would never be able to recoup what you put in, but as above, let’s not try and be too rational by attempting to make the numbers add up. What would this project add to the cultural capital of everyone who saw you driving around in an exquisitely finished 2+2, as I so often do, to quote the Joker, “it’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message”. This time, the message is; we have a past, we can enjoy that past, we could drive a car that is infinitely more reliable, but we choose the option that makes us feel a little more alive.