Parallel Citizen - Page 2
Decentralized Social Media: 15 Years in the Making
A brief history of decentralized social media, and a snapshot of the current landscape.
Digital Fentanyl: The AI Doom Thesis
Every society has a drug-defining era, an intoxicant that captures the zeitgeist and reshapes public life. For 19th-century China, it was opium. For industrial Britain, gin. In our time, the defining drug isn't a molecule but a medium: the infinite doomscroll.
Chokepoints of the ‘Decentralized’ Web
The promise of Web3 has always been a more decentralized, user-owned internet - a radical departure from the walled gardens and algorithmic overlords of Web2.
Proof of Thought: Remixing is Forking
We don’t have an idea shortage, we have an attribution shortage. Memetic ideas flash through feeds, go viral, and then vanish. They’re rarely nurtured or credited, but rather evolve in fragmented ways.
From Digital Nomad to Network Participant
The digital nomad lifestyle is no longer an experiment. It’s a mature, self-sustaining class of global citizens.
Updates on Network State Experiments (mid-2025)
In the last post, we overviewed all existing network state projects from 2023-2025 which made a serious attempt at bridging from internet to land. In this post, I am sharing: 1) A corrective addendum with some updates from the previous post 2) New projects that might be next on the horizon, things worth following.
Lessons from Network State Experiments (2023–2025)
My cheeky play on The American State of the Union.
The Network State Manifesto
Adapted from Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
Parallel Citizen is a publication for those building civilization outside the old coordinates.