Severin Matusek

Is it the writer’s role to be strategic or truthful?

AI boosters argue that, while, generative technologies are new and shiny, they’re at root no different from the digital technologies an artist like Fincher uses, or the practical ones an artist like Carpenter used. They argue that AI is just another tool.

But I can’t get past the fact that, for something to count as a tool, it has to help you do... See more

When people bring up the specter of generative AI as relates to creative work, my mind goes in a few different directions. But the point that feels most salient is the simplest: Actually doing things is fun.

Carly speaks from her background in magazines to explain that adding a Discord channel to the NEW MODELS structure was important because “editors don’t make magazines, they make audiences. And a magazine or a podcast alone is no longer the way to do that. It has to be something more cybernetic.” She paraphrases theories from K Allado McDowell’s... See more

For some people, in considering this possibility, the question naturally arises: “That sounds nice, but how is a tiny software company supposed to compete with huge and well-funded companies?” The answer is that you don’t really have to. You just have to get an understanding of the proper pace and scale of whatever your endeavor is. Get there, and... See more

With institutions, the material support for production is separated from its consumption, audience, and transmission. On the platforms, all of those need to be operating on the same rails to enable the totalizing optimization for the growth of the platform itself.

Institutions embody the collective agreement and fabric of meaning that, above any external forces, builds, as opposed to extracts from, cultural and social value. In the age of platforms, the challenge is to reconfigure and revive institutions, employing “intra-institutional technology” that augments their missions without cannibalizing them,... See more