NETWORKED REALISM: Whoever Controls the Infrastructure, Controls Reality

21 snips

Aug 28, 2025

Guest

Severin Matusek

Guest

Nick Houde

In this insightful discussion, Nick Houde and Severin Matusek of co-matter explore how tech giants have reshaped liberal values in a world increasingly dominated by hard power. They delve into the influence of digital infrastructure on cultural narratives and the precarious balance between individual freedom and state authority. Highlighting the motivations of tech workers shifting to roles in defense, they reveal a quest for purpose. The duo also critiques media polarization and the challenges of navigating a fragmented public discourse in our digitally saturated age.

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INSIGHT

Purpose Vacuum Fuels Hard Power

The collapse of liberal open-ended promises created a craving for a moral compass and purposeful projects.
Hard power reassertion fills that void, attracting people seeking meaning in tech and industry.

INSIGHT

Infrastructure Is Geopolitical Leverage

Where servers and cloud providers sit becomes a geopolitical lever with tangible political consequences.
Control of infrastructure translates directly into the ability to influence institutions and states.

INSIGHT

Three Powers Pull Every Tech

The three powers framework shows technologies are pulled by regulatory, monopoly, and people forces simultaneously.
Crypto is shaped by all three rather than belonging to any single power bloc.

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It's feeling like we're living in a very strange moment in time where liberal norms of openness have been shattered by the same class of tech industry titans who expressed these values just a decade ago. In this episode I spoke to Nick Houde and Severin Matusek from co-matter, a research and strategy studio based in Berlin, who recently published an incredible memo that is chock full of incredible analysis and insight into our current moment.

"New World Order: The Return of Hard Power and Soft Beliefs is a 35-page research memo about what happens when power, infrastructure and ideology collide.

A manual for anyone trying to make sense of the present, New World Order contains ideas, context and language to participate in shaping the world that emerges in front of our eyes."

The memo is chock full of useful and powerful concepts that help explain this moment. You can order a copy of the memo on Metalabel here. (I've already got my copy!) Lots of great quotes like "Yesterday's moral stance is tomorrow's liability" and "Whoever controls the infrastructure controls reality itself."

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ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.