Severin Matusek

Amid the breathless techno-optimist awe of artificial intelligence—and ahistorical dismissal of its novelty—it is easy to forget that the current crises of reading and writing are unprecedented in degree, but not in kind. “After Words” considers what’s actually different about today’s information overload and whether we’ve been postliterate for far... See more

In Mythologies , Roland Barthes discusses how wrestling (and now, politics) uses kayfabe, the convention of presenting staged narratives and spectacles as real to capture attention and elicit a desired response from an audience.

At one point I was struggling to connect the dots and our moderator, the science fiction scholar Sherryl Vint, made the very astute observation that what seems to capture my interest is the gap between models and reality.

Screenshotting as one of the essential underrated tools of the digital age - the equivalent of inventing cameras for the physical world, so we can take “pictures” of everything happening around us in the digital realm, and share + discuss it

NFTs are still early, and will evolve. Their utility will increase as digital experiences are built around them, including marketplaces, social networks, showcases, games, and virtual worlds.

The role of a successful place is to provide a catalytic context for missions.

When it comes to meme culture, I would say Elon is a Level 1 Crook or a Level 3 Street Thug at best, but he seized a moment of shared dread to engineer timeline hysteria that went on for days.