Severin Matusek

I argued before that “social media” was an alibi for injecting more TV into people’s lives to take advantage of increased network connectivity — that we had to be persuaded that it was a pro-social thing to do to carry little TVs around and watch them at every possible moment. Conflating friendship and entertainment was part of that campaign. Now... See more

“The hunger for something shared is going to increase,” writes Stratechery’s Ben Thompson about the solipsism of the AI era.

In fact, if I sense that an artist is creating, saying or doing things just to win public approval, or to yield to the demands of the market, well, that’s when I tend to turn away.

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.

The last three decades of being online have shown us over and over again that lasting culture cannot be automated and meaningful creativity cannot be manufactured. Both must be given the proper time, space, and tools needed to blossom organically and of their own accord. From cavemen to hippies, the core of our cultures have revolved around shared... See more

Whenever I asked Yarvin about resonances between his writing and real-world events, his response was nonchalant. He seemed to see himself as a conduit for pure reason—the only mystery, to him, was why it had taken others so long to catch up. “You can invent a lie, but you can only discover the truth,” he told me.

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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Holly+ represents the future that Herndon and Dryhurst anticipate for music, art, and literature: a world of “infinite media,” in which anyone can adjust, adapt, or iterate on the work, talents, and traits of others.