Ep93 The Aesthetics of Anxiety

The Net Society crew dives into the arrival of “normie harnesses” as Pri shares her obsession with Instinct, an iMessage-based AI assistant that handles reservations, appointments, shopping, and the administrative backlog of everyday life. They debate whether standalone agent apps can stay defensible as OpenAI, Anthropic, Apple, and Grok absorb similar capabilities—and what happens when agents, rather than humans, become the primary users of the internet. From there, the conversation shifts to crypto’s regulatory rally before widening into the political backlash against data centers, public anxiety around AI, and tech’s growing trust problem. The crew explores loss aversion, the aesthetics of infrastructure, machine-written content, and whether an abundance economy can replace decades of extraction. They close by weighing recursive self-improvement, shorter workweeks, disposable workers, the Fourth Turning, Stripe’s acquisition of OpenRouter, agentic payments, and the possibility of a more useful, sustainable era for crypto.Mentioned in the episodeInstinct AI https://instinct.co/Instinct review https://x.com/scottbelsky/status/2090823161335959855?s=20The Fourth Turning https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/670089.The_Fourth_TurningShow & HostsNet Society: https://x.com/net__societyAaron Wright: https://x.com/awrigh01Chris F: https://x.com/ChrisF_0xDerek Edwards: https://x.com/derekedwsPriyanka Desai: https://x.com/pridesaiProducer/Editor: https://x.com/0xFnkl