Severin Matusek

Brian Eno’s idea of the “scenius” is a constant reference point for how to channel this collective awareness. In case you’re unfamiliar, Eno coined the word in the 1990s to describe “the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene” that can produce something greater than the sum of its parts.

I can’t overemphasize the value of getting hands-on experience, combined with the time I’d previously spent on research. I think it’s unlikely I could’ve gotten to my current point of view just by reading and talking to developers. Through my initial work, I’d become very familiar with what developers think about open source. But in trying to turn... See more

My secret, cynical theory is that we are so completely numbed and overwhelmed by information these days that we simply don’t think in these more abstract terms anymore (and I think it’s that numbness that I want to capture in this piece somehow). Or maybe we still do, but it all gets lost in idle musings on Twitter or in group chats or messages to

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AE: Reflecting back on the past year, one project that stands out for me is Mitchell F. Chan’s The Boys of Summer (2023) because I’m interested in how we are all folded into gamified networks. Which works or exhibitions have resonated the most with you over that time? ‍

I sent the essay to some of my most prolific, creative friends, and they all resonated deeply. Faces materialized in my mind like photographs developing in solution. The indie hacker from Paris who has built four bootstrapped micro SaaS businesses with Loveable. Researchers in China taking apart viral closed-source products and launching... See more

Now our President, along with his lieutenant content-generator Elon Musk, is working at the pace of an internet that has been relentlessly accelerating for eight years.

But I’m into the new kids who are trying to make the internet how they want it, like Zane with Silk. The future has to look like something, after all...