Severin Matusek

A contingent of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have spurred a rightward shift, leading to the rise of the “Liberaltarian” — a term coined by two Stanford political economists to describe the tech industry’s proclivity toward trumpeting liberalism in some social issues but maintaining antigovernment posturing in regulating businesses.

Key findings include:

• Globally people are both excited and nervous about AI . Fifty-three per cent say they are excited for products and services that use AI, compared to 50% who say AI makes them nervous. Asia is where excitement is highest while the Anglosphere and Europe are most sceptical.


• Humans are viewed as more likely to discriminate than

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Citarella noted that he’s been warning, for more than half a decade, that too many people remain under the mistaken impression that “what happens on the internet isn’t real.” He added that “the professional commentary class” has been particularly insulated from the power of digital discourse, because “they pay attention to the legacy sources of... See more

On TikTok, as The Washington Post has reported, some creators are making $5,000 a month using AI tools to write scripts and animate extremely dumb viral videos where old men talk about soiling themselves.

The Slowdown is also a collective of editors, writers, photographers, filmmakers, producers, creative directors, and strategists who work on special projects for major companies and brands, from a podcast series with soundproof booth company ROOM to a short documentary film for Van Cleef & Arpels and a book with Molteni (as featured in PIN–UP 37).

Vibing a project – in which you simply speak the thing you want into existence by prompting – is now a popular approach.

Now ask yourself: How much physical stuff is yours? Think of every item in your house: books, paintings, photos, CDs, heirlooms, trophies, etc. What’s the market value of all that? As our lives move further online, so will our stuff, and we’ll need some sort of infrastructure that allows us to own it.

4/ The internet is rewiring not only the media sector (as with streaming) but the public itself, which is breaking up, or being broken, into multiple — some say parallel — realities.

As you can tell from my attempt to describe it, we do not have a good language for this shift.