Severin Matusek

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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“I’ve used ChatGPT a handful of times,” writes Hsu, “and on one occasion it accomplished a scheduling task so quickly that I began to understand the intoxication of hyper-efficiency.”

or an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation... See more

My new piece is live. I think it's one of the more important things I've ever written.

If a technology has emancipatory potential, it is not the would-be feudal lords who will realize it: It is the community of power-users, the weirdos and dreamers—working together—who will bring it to fruition.

A decentralized brand is a meme.

A lot of people say kids don’t have subcultures anymore. I don’t think that’s true. You just don’t have to commit to it like you used to. You don’t have to put on clown paint to find an identity anymore. Identity is being served around you, shaped whether you like it or not. Also, we didn’t have a number over our head every day showing our value,... See more

If we want people to make different decisions is to challenge people what to think of the self. Who are you, what are all the dimensions of you? It’s in those dimensions that you challenge what you care about. That person has a different sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Stories by Stephenson – which tend, predictably, towards singular heroes who win at technocracy – form the inspiration behind Amazon’s Blue Origin and Facebook’s Metaverse.