Pay Attention

Welcome to another issue of In Transit, coming back after a small Easter hiatus. Thanks for being here and a special high five to new subscribers.

As always, you can collect this essay on Mirror.

“Get in loser, we’re going to shape the future of the internet.”

I enjoy writing essays frequently as a way to keep progressing; there are always new insights, trends to explore, and things to learn. For the past year, we’ve explored several different trendlines that play a role in shaping the future of entertainment, consumer internet, and probably society as a whole.

The topics covered range from Roblox via AI to crypto and memecoins on the other end of the spectrum.

The formation of new trends, habits, and culture initially happens under the surface, away from the mainstream spotlight. That makes it easy to miss. It happens slowly at first, then things reach escape velocity, and then everything, everywhere, all at once.

The recent growth of the Farcaster social protocol and the surrounding ecosystem comes to mind as a recent example. And it’s still early days over there. None of my neighbors are on Farcaster yet, and most probably don’t even own crypto yet.

At least three major trendlines should be on everyone’s radar today. They also happen to be the recurring topics of my writing.

• crypto and blockchain networks

• ai and generative tech

• immersive online spaces

From an outsider’s perspective, they can all be dismissed if you wanted to (but why would you):

“Crypto isn’t real value; it’s a bubble.”

“AI content won’t outpace human-made content.” 

“Only kids and teenagers play Roblox and Fortnite.”

I do not subscribe to any of these views, and neither should you if you want to understand the future.

And that future isn’t shaped in a vacuum. There is no crypto-shaped future over here and an AI-shaped one over there. Instead, the trends all have a slight bend to them. A bend that makes them converge to impact the same future.

Immersive online spaces like Roblox serve as a proxy and proof-of-concept for conditioning future generations to experience the digital world and live their online lives with higher fidelity. This immersion requires infinitely more high-fidelity content and assets. Generative tech enables the required production capacity and customization capabilities to meet this demand. As this happens, ownership of digital assets (from fashion to attention tokens) will become normalized and expected.

Future corporations will form and operate in this environment as digital-first and digital-only entities. New business models will be invented. This will all be orchestrated through public ledgers, smart contracts, and blockchain networks (or just crypto).

It all converges to the same future. Pay attention.

Paying attention doesn’t mean you read some essays here and there and should consider yourself covered. If you truly want to pay attention, there’s only one way; be on the ground.

Spend time in those immersive spaces. Adopt some AI into your workflow. Start playing around with Farcaster and in-frame transactions.

How would you understand the energy of memecoins, and their proxy as attention tokens if you never felt it (even when that means getting rugged)?

It’s like cooking. Nobody becomes a great chef by reading a thousand recipes but spending zero hours in the kitchen.

Yet, there are a surprising number of chefs with many recipes but no receipts. 

Don’t listen to them. 

Instead, figure it out yourself—and have fun doing it.

Thanks for reading along today, see you soon!
– Martin