Severin Matusek

The final notes of the AI-and-I essay are cowed resignation, awed acquiescence, and what Trotsky called the “terrifying helplessness” of cultural production at “the beginning of a great epoch”

The Slowdown is also a collective of editors, writers, photographers, filmmakers, producers, creative directors, and strategists who work on special projects for major companies and brands, from a podcast series with soundproof booth company ROOM to a short documentary film for Van Cleef & Arpels and a book with Molteni (as featured in PIN–UP 37).

We shifted from cyberpunk manifestos, to corporate networks and the commoditization of the user for economic extraction.

In practice, this devotion to luck reveals itself everywhere from retail trading frenzies to viral overnight success stories. Instead of following predictable career ladders or carefully planned investments, people chase sudden gains, hoping to decode the next market upswing or social media glitch.

I asked Deresiewicz if he felt anything had changed in the 13 years since he wrote the piece. Back then, he says, “I was still in that mindset of ‘selling out is evil.’” When he began research on his next book, however, “I realized that was kind of an outdated, privileged, and intensely unrealistic attitude,” he says. “Now, you don’t have a choice,... See more

What is needed, Citarella’s strategy suggests, is an understanding of a kind of post-internet politics, where, like it or not, online life is embraced as part and parcel of how modern belief systems are formed.