Second order effects are things that happen as unexpected outcomes of something else happening. These effects can create surprising causal chains.
Take this for example: A pandemic makes everyone need to work from home leads to an increase in video calling leads to Walmart reporting that people are buying more shirts), but not pants.
Emerson Spartz is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on virality and the internet. He founded Mugglenet - the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan site - as a middle school drop out, and would later found and raise tens of millions for Dose.
In the past weeks, Emerson started an open crowdsourced document on the Coronavirus’ second order effects that has, itself, gone viral, especially among venture capitals and other investor circles trying to understand what the world looks like on the other side of this.
Emerson brings a surprisingly optimistic perspective on where this could lead a generation of people who are now more fully plugged in to the internet than ever before.
