Severin Matusek

The magic of the internet is that it lets us build whole new societies on top of the existing one. These new, internet-led societies have repeatedly shown the power to evolve, push, and even overtake the physical society that created them (for good and for ill).

I’ve noticed a new trend among the chattering classes of online AI guy hypebeast. Their current stage of grief over AGI not arriving or having very little to show in the way of ROI for their LLMs has shifted to blaming the users. To them, it’s not that AI is not working as they intended; it’s the people who are too stupid to understand how to use... See more

From Asparouhova’s perspective, the lesson we should draw is not that bad ideas should in fact be suppressed but that good ideas require the trussing of sturdy, credible institutions—structures that might withstand the countervailing urge to raze everything to the ground.

We have embraced a myth that leaders are special, particularly brave or gifted. But mostly, leaders are amplified by their peers, part of a culture where leading is expected, rewarded and supported.

NFTs offer the promise of scarcity and authenticity for digital goods. NFTs aren’t the only way to create scarcity and authenticity online — trusted, centralized entities such as banks (and platforms such as Twitter and Apple) do it within their verticals, and blockchain tech is evolving to address myriad environmental and security concerns. So the... See more

The voices that helped shape Light and Shade include: Noman Bashir, computing and climate impact fellow at MIT; James Bridle, artist, writer and technologist; Alex de Vries, PhD candidate at VU Amsterdam’s Institute for Environmental Studies and founder of Digiconomist; Linda Dounia Rebeiz, artist, designer and writer; Shaolei Ren, associate... See more

I can’t overemphasize the value of getting hands-on experience, combined with the time I’d previously spent on research. I think it’s unlikely I could’ve gotten to my current point of view just by reading and talking to developers. Through my initial work, I’d become very familiar with what developers think about open source. But in trying to turn... See more

But it is far too late. Consensus reality is gone. We are blessed to live now, in the West, in a strange world without common sense.