Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone, and at the same time, happy end of Maslenitsa; and to those who love filming queues in fast-forward mode—happy opportunity to indulge in your favorite pastime. So many holidays in one day—isn’t that great, isn’t that panarchy!

As for me, another chapter of The Network State has been quietly translated. Balaji Srinivasan continues to discuss the trends of the near future, and if in the previous chapter he discussed socio-political trends, now he touches upon the techno-economic consequences of the digitalization and internetization of everything.

For instance, he notes that the sharp lowering of the publishing threshold increases variance: alongside traditional, polished, and weighted but uninteresting positions, a multitude of the most unusual chthonic entities crawl into the light. And besides the shaking of discourse via social networks, there is also the shaking of financial stability through countless cryptocurrencies.

Another interesting aspect discussed by the author is that the total digitalization of everything leads to digital entities becoming primary, while physical ones, in essence, materialize on demand if there is a need.

He also briefly touches upon the mystery of why we do not observe as frantic a leap in productivity in the physical world as we do in the digital world. Then, providing a whole brood of hypotheses, he suggests choosing between them independently.

In short, the chapter is quite saturated with ideas and generalizations, so I don’t see much point in summarizing it; it’s easier to just read it.