Severin Matusek

The co-opting of “community” into a sales strategy is insidious, not only because it reduces likeminded groups of people to consumer demographics, but because, in an era when we’re all encouraged to cultivate our own “personal brands,” it also reduces each of us to a salesperson , seeking out likeminded people in order to sell them things , whether... See more

In 2024, an online experiment with 36 ChatGPT users found that use of AI can expand how many creative ideas an individual user has, but at a group level, “users tended to produce less semantically distinct ideas”. That same year, another study reached similar results; this time it was a group of short-story writers who each managed to independently... See more

Blockchains are the internet’s native financial layer.

Digital belongings exist on the internet, but there aren’t that many types of them. On Fortnite you can acquire guns and outfits. On Reddit you gain badges. Point is: There’s a lot of stuff on the internet, but there isn’t much stuff that’s yours.

About values and the selfAll of this makes people question who they want to be. There’s a need that’s not being answered in economic terms or about status. It’s about belonging, being seen, recognised.

Robert Shiller coined narrative economics, arguing that stories drive economic behavior. I think we are in a new iteration of all of this where the stories aren't just influencing economic activity, they are the economic activity. Attention is a precursor to wealth (in many ways) and speculation drives it.

"Sciences are born when philosophy learns to ask the right questions; their potential is suppressed when it does not. New philosophy is born when new technologies force it to invent new concepts."

Popular crypto influencer Crypto Chico has a breakdown in this video, talking about depression and the pressure of creating daily content.

How will these changes filter through to the ways our attention is captured, and where it’s directed, in years to come?