Everything proffers a philosophy of life, whether it knows it or not. TV shows are no different. A TV show literally creates an entire world—what a person is (an ontology), how people relate to each other (an ethics), how bodies move through space (a physics). Indeed, each show is a veritable cosmology. While they may be a frivolous distraction or a profound experience, every show necessarily makes an argument about life. And I have to say, it’s fun finding profundity in the things we find irrelevant. So while I may sound dramatic at times, please know that this sense of drama is part of the fun, even if I’m being quite serious.

On “Spencer,” “Inherent Vice,” the films of Sofia Coppola, John Cassavetes — and more! — with pervasive, if unstated, reference to Gilles Deleuze and how filmic affect distinguishes itself from the affect of characters and the mechanics of story, becoming a material (albeit invisible) in its own right. — Art Is the Art of Affect Art is precisely the art of affect and not, as is sometimes believed, the art of representation. Art is not beholden to the real because art is itself real. As a friend of mine wrote ages ago, “The life recorded is the life doubly lived.” …

While people tend to think of crypto as digital money, the fact is most money — including fiat — is already digital. No, what this technology has inaugurated is something so novel we’ve only just begun to grasp the implications: digital economies. We now have the power to create new economic systems — to assign and distribute value in fundamentally new ways that serve the majority of people, not just those already wealthy.

Thanks to Facebook’s now eponymous focus, everyone is talking about building the metaverse—a 3D world of virtual shops, clubs, gyms, work spaces, and events. Which reveals an embarrassing lack of imagination. New ways to buy stuff? New ways to increase “productivity”? New ways for corporate owners to extract even more value for themselves? Really? Meanwhile, the technology of distributed systems such as blockchain, DAOs, and cryptocurrency —what we might call Web 3.0—offers a radical reorganization of civilization itself, proliferating digital nation-states powered by their own economies created, organized, and run by their communities, redistributing both wealth and power while side-stepping state intervention. The future is not the metaverse of Silicon Valley. It’s the multiverse of distributed systems.

It’s becoming clear that having private corporations own and control our social networks raises (at least) three ever-increasing societal problems: the right to privacy; the right to own your information, attention, and engagement; and the right to publish and interact freely. The technology of decentralization—including blockchain and cryptocurrency—offers a solution: social networks that are owned and controlled by their participants.

By abstracting indefinitely, Deleuze and Guattari identify modes of assemblage that traverse materials and disciplines, inaugurating a downright dizzying realm of knowledge: categories of ways bodies constitute themselves and are constituted. Freed from material borders, bodies are suddenly connected to each other in ways we might never have considered, propelling both the multi-directionality and velocity of thought itself. And uprooting materialism as any kind of ground as all there are are events all the way down.

Silicon Valley tech has prided itself on being “disruptive” but cryptocurrency and distributed systems may very well disrupt Silicon Valley out of business—as crypto introduces new architectures of innovation, corporate governance, funding, and value distribution that run against the very grain of Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley Echoes the Economic Design of the Dollar There’s no doubt that Silicon Valley has been the center of tech innovation. Think about the opening sequence of HBO’s show —half satire, half love affair — entitled simply, “Silicon Valley.” …

A “class” is a physical space—static, hence indifferent to the rhythm of pedagogy. A course, however, is a movement—a choreography of knowledge, understanding, revelation, and affect. A course is less a map of a subject than a particular tour through a domain. — Teaching is an Event (Not Solely an Indexing of Knowledge) I love the word “course” in a pedagogic sense. If done well, a course is precisely that: a prescribed movement through a field, a veritable choreography of understanding.

Deleuze and Guattari’s books defy our casual assumptions about what it is to read. So while it may seem like they’re trying to keep you out with esoteric jargon, that’s not it at all. They are not easy to read, sure, but not because they’re trying to be difficult but…