Severin Matusek

We're now living in a system where attention dynamics are the operating system for resource allocation, political decisions, and identity formation.

Watching the new Miyazaki documentary ("Miyazaki and the Heron" on Max) and just getting hit by haymaker after haymaker

Creator platforms algorithmically incentivize us to create at the pace Wall Street and the market demand. This is why we’re pushed to create more and more. Not because our audiences are asking for it. Not because the world needs more of what we have to say. Because we as artists, the platforms, and their investors desire, to varying degrees,... See more

No topic—not the genocidal war and famine in Gaza, not Trumpian authoritarianism—has magnetized bien-pensant attention this year in the way that AI has. Writing on AI thus comes in every mode: muckraking (“Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to ‘Munch’ Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health”), scholastic (“Deep Learning’s Governmentality”), polemical... See more

Generative AI is disruptive, is transformative, and is reducing friction, but the economic incentives for using it are geared far less toward supercharging human potential and much more toward producing abundant slop.