General Acrobatics
"Man is a rope, stretched between beast and Übermensch—a rope over an abyss..." —Nietzsche
The Desert of the Real
"It is up to us to again become the nomads of this desert... a virgin, sacred space without pathways, continuous as Bataille wished it, where only the wind lifts the sand, where only the wind watches over the sand." —Baudrillard
Immanence Machines
"Nature loves to encrypt." —Heraclitus
Nockchain Syllabus Vol. 1
We're currently working on a technical statement about our market thesis. In the meantime, we thought we'd publish a list of sources for the 14 essays we've published in the past few months. (We've always taken care to cite our sources, but
Sam Houston's Silent Slope to Texas
On silence, record-keeping, and the obscure geographical teleology of American freedom.
Aristocratic Information Markets
On Hernán Cortés and informal capital formation.
Faith, Exodus, and Decentralization
"May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: 'Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity...'" —William Bradford
Inhibited Synthesis
"The increasingly rigorous differentiation of marriage from trade, or politics from economics, finds its ultimate conceptual definition in the thought of a moral agency which is utterly impervious to learning, communication, or exchange." —Nick Land
How to Pass a Torch
"Sovereign is he who commands the compute." —James Poulos
Sacrifice, Festival, and Proof of Work
"The festival... is an aspiration for destruction... but there is a conservative prudence that regulates and limits it." —Georges Bataille
Freedom and Silence
Everyone talks about "freedom of speech," but we forget the freedom to say nothing.
Apples From a Tree
"It is precisely in times of ‘laxness’ that tragedy runs through the houses and streets, that great love and great hatred are born and the flame of knowledge blazes up into the sky." —Nietzsche
A Brief History of Cognitive Insecurity
Western civilization is an esoteric war of religion masked by an exoteric media history.
The Managerial Revolution and Its Discontents
On Marx, Burnham, and the future of capitalism.
The Zero-Knowledge Society
After control society, the zero-knowledge society.
The Blockchain as a Medium
On the end of Mass Media Man.
The Computer as a Medium
McLuhan predicted computers would program a new society. What happened to that?
The Grid and the Forest
On Ernst Jünger, James C. Scott, and escape from the great interrogation.
