Time is a flat circle in digital physics. We can travel backwards, forwards or just endlessly circle the present in a sea of memes. To be online is to be free of the constraints of the physical world. We can travel through layers of digital space, summoning and transforming culture, and in the process perform acts of communal mythmaking as pioneers codifying what it means to live in a fully networked world.
Starholder explores our transition into this networked society. It embraces the freedom offered by digital physics to transcend time, space and the shackles of traditional media forms. We are both fact and fiction, deeply contemplating today's digital frontier and the behavior of emergent systems within it (Crypto, AI, Digital Physics) to offer a speculative vision of what the future could be.
To help center people, here's a quick overview of what Starholder is today.
600k words of speculative fiction & theory at Starholder.xyz
Containing two novels: The Last Network & REKT, A Crypto Hallucination
Short fiction, theory and artifacts that form the scaffolding of 100 years of alternate history spanning 1999 to 2099
5 albums (and counting) of original music set in the world of Starholder
On the ground analysis and theory of today's digital frontier via socials. We'll migrate and expand on the work of ChrisF in /starholder on Farcaster.
Early experiments in AI storytelling and rendering the world in video
All of these channels exist in conversation with themselves. Text forms the core of the world and then we use generative AI to render the world up in higher resolution. Ambitions are massive in terms of size, scope and breadth of topics covered, which can make Starholder understandably hard to approach. The beauty of it is that there is no central canon, no core lore one must know to enter the world. It can be absorbed piecemeal over time, and as we start to further explore the programmable media capabilities of Farcaster, we will develop incentivized reasons to do so.
Because this project acts as both an interpreter of the present and an attempt at projecting the future, here's how to think of time and the boundary between reality and fiction in Starholder:
When we are writing about the present, we are addressing today's digital realities. This will consist of theory, analysis and opinion about what is happening in crypto, AI and related fields today. Treat this as subjective non-fiction. It's real world applicable information and analysis.
When we are writing about the future, it is all speculative fiction which is trying to project our understanding of today's realities down a pathway of branching possibilities.
When we are writing about the past, we are backfilling the world to add depth, narrative consistency and to create a fictional techno-cultural foundation on which we build our speculative future. So treat that as fiction.
TLDR: If writing about today, it's real. If time traveling in either direction, it's fiction.
What can you expect from the /starholder channel on Farcaster?
If you've found me (ChrisF) to be high signal on Twitter, I'll continue that here posting about the present.
I produced a lot of words last year across different formats. The Starholder.xyz website needs to be overhauled to consolidate, organize and contextualize that. This channel will syndicate that work out and act as a publishing platform for us.
We will tell the stories of Starholder in hopefully a snackable and entertaining manner, seeing what frames and other new formats allow us, which we couldn't have done elsewhere.
Networking the world of Starholder via programmable media, tokens and rendering ourselves up both across traditional distribution channels and putting shit onchain when appropriate.
What shouldn't you expect?
Hustlecore grinding. This is a one person, part-time project that fills my free time between professional obligations and family.
Accelerated hyper-financialization. I care about using tokens as units of attention and programmable media as much as I care about their speculative use cases. Being early here will not make you rich and may never benefit you financially at all.
Consistency or repetition. This is an exploration. While everything thematically links together, we often veer into specific topics, periods or media formats for extended periods. For instance, Q1 of this year was very heavily focused on AI music to the detriment of fiction. Generally, present day analysis will be a consistent output, everything else will be all over the place.
Let's close with time, since it is a flat circle in Starholder. This project has been going on for over two years now. When first conceiving of it, much of the tech and tooling needed to do it properly was not there yet. It's been illuminating and gratifying to see what we thought was needed come to market since. Decentralized social was one of those key pieces. Farcaster has reached a threshold where it's time to fuck around and find out if Starholder is ready to operate as a networked world of programmable media.
Please join us on the journey at /starholder
