Severin Matusek

Thus, the expats of our age will be those who move offline, as much as it is those who move abroad. Living offline is the real luxury: something that is only affordable to elites. It is only by getting off our phones that we will ever collectively conquer our learned helplessness.

This is tragic. The loss of friction deprives people of something crucial. What happens between imagination and creation is ineffable—it entails struggle, iteration, joy, and frustration, disappointment, and pride. It is the process through which we enact agency. It is how we make meaning and move through the world. To lose that, I fear, is to... See more

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.

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.

I’m mostly here in Edge Lanna on a mission myself: To help run a week-long event called Protocol Worlds, a part of the Summer of Protocols program I help run. The event is a simulation focused on the idea of holographic cities — digital city-like social realities (ideally crypto-flavored of course, and preferably Ethereum-flavored) projected onto... See more

As fact grows stranger than fiction, we should embrace the surreal and try harder to imagine more outlandish fictions. We might begin by accepting that we are being lied to all the time, that most of what we hear and see is an illusion, misrepresentation, or performance—and that’s fine. Life has in many ways become a fiction, reality is vanishing... See more