




serapath【ツ】☮(📍🇨🇦) BIP110 nomad🍐⇄🍐ecogame dev
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@serapath
🌈 @playproject_io 🧙🏽 @wizardamigos 🌱 @datdotorg 🔮 @dat_ecosystem 🦩 npub18y99ww94dkscfzwvvuk60sn9fyzqj66kpjj7cpvplp 🦣 @[email protected]











In 1995, my @HooverInst colleague Eugene Volokh published "Cheap Speech and What It Will Do"---the most prescient article ever written about the internet. In a single piece he predicted Spotify, the Kindle, Substack, and filter bubbles (and more)! His key insight was: when the cost of speaking drops to near zero, power shifts from intermediaries to speakers and listeners. Today, the cost of speaking has gotten even closer to zero, and the collapse of intermediaries is accelerating. Prediction markets are replacing polls, AI tools are replacing experts, and Substacks are replacing newspapers and academic journals. Yesterday @MTSlive launched, an a16z-backed live show going direct to audiences, bypassing traditional media entirely. What to make of all this? Volokh predicted the collapse of intermediaries would cause problems--a "possible dark side" he called it--and it has. But he bet that, ultimately, the benefits from unleashing more free expression outweigh the costs. Will that be true with the strange new media ecosystem we're seeing arise today? It will probably depend on the choices we make in the coming years to structure AI, prediction markets, and other new tools in ways that align with free societies.

















