The New Systems of Survival

The author revisits Jane Jacobs' 1992 "Systems of Survival" model, arguing that its guardian and commerce syndromes stopped working as a guide to people's values after about 2014. He proposes a new "LinkedIn-Twitter test" that sorts systems, people and ideas by whether they feel more like LinkedIn or Twitter. He ties the two resulting responses to an ungoverned world, Weirdness Syndrome and Hypernormalcy Syndrome, and asks which is more adaptive. The piece also mentions Adam Curtis's documentary HyperNormalisation and an informal poll on erasing one of the platforms.