Severin Matusek

Editorial: the community collates notes from our weekly talks and turns them into brief bulletins. These bulletins align the community and helps us build bridges across our community to be inclusive of non-English speakers. Editorial pieces by COLORS also feature calls to participation, which allows us to explore how to create dynamic communities... See more

I’d describe my time from 2015-2020 (when the book will be published) in three distinct phases:

• Phase I: 2015-2016: Discovery, exploration, initial research, hypothesis generation (funded by the Ford Foundation)


• Phase II: 2016-2018: Experience, experimenting, hypothesis testing (working at GitHub)


• Phase III: 2018-2020: Refining, summarizing,

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“I work with celebrity mostly, and at times what’s happening is that the Max kind of people are more expensive than the celebrity because they’re moving units in a different way,” says creative consultant Chrissie Miller, a client and friend. “They just have an audience that is ready to buy.”

ne side effect of the vibe shift is that the media establishment has started to accept that there is, in fact, such a thing as a Silicon Valley intellectual—not the glib, blustery dudes who post every thought that enters their brains but people who prefer to post at length and on the margins.

Research has shown that, inside some companies, workers begin to see their colleagues who use generative AI as less creative, even less trustworthy.

If the visual rhetoric of meme coins trades in irony, nostalgia, and populist spectacle, their deeper logic might reveal an even more profound dynamic: the transformation of speculation itself into a mode of promotional and ideological production.

There is a competition going on for authority online — not just authority in a particular subject matter, like politics or finance, but the authority to provide a comprehensive view of what matters on the internet, pointing out what to pay to attention to.

To counteract workslop, leaders should model purposeful AI use, establish clear norms, and encourage a “pilot mindset” that combines high agency with optimism—promoting AI as a collaborative tool, not a shortcut.