SpaceXponential

In a way, crypto only magnifies or exposes the historically intimate ties between art, status and money. When we are in the thick of operating in the art system, it’s easy to forget how the aesthetic value, historical value, monetary value are actively negotiated for each art object. What web3 did was simply render art as a literal currency.

Eventually, I began coding some rough prototypes for John Michael and Stuart. At that point, we didn’t talk about how it would be a business or even how it would function on a practical, user, or human level. It was really, really utopian.Those days we asked questions like, “How does a person be their best self on the internet?” and “How do you get... See more

+ Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.

This, I believe, is what happened to many of America’s key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s. They got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level... See more

The pressure to perform and live up to the expectations of others is not a new social phenomenon — nor a bad one. **^^But the way it manifests at the internet’s global scale increases its intensity tenfold — especially for young people. The goal is no longer to simply live up to the high expectations of your parents and peers — online you could be... See more

Objective systems seem desirable, relying entirely on machines and not fallible and opportunistic humans. There is, however, a catch – machines may be running the code, but humans are acting on it. A subjective system might be able to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate transactions in a way that an objective one could not. Concepts... See more

This is nothing new in the physical social world, but it is revolutionary in the digital social world, where groups and shared messenger threads have historically always been communal spaces.

Cult leaders are their own moderators

Cult leaders need mechanisms for elevating and blessing followers, as well as mutually reinforcing power

Cults need... See more