Bilingual archive · since 1948·Last write: 2026
Every ideology that built Silicon Valley, mapped as one universe.
From cybernetics to the AGI cathedral, from hacker culture to e/acc, from the cypherpunk mailing list to the network state — this is the long thought-history of the engineers, the founders, the prophets, the apostates, and the heretics. A knowledge graph, not a blog.
Ideologies
25
Figures
11
AI wars
5
Essays
5
Clusters
5
Languages
EN · 中
Operating premise
Treat each ideology as a feedback loop with inputs (texts, thinkers, capital), outputs (products, institutions, casualties), and an objective function. Read the graph; the genealogy reveals itself.
§ 01 · The universe
Five clusters, one lineage tree.
The Hacker Lineage
The Venture Religion
AI Belief Systems
Empire & Power
Counter-Currents
lineage kin conflict
◇ Cluster
The Hacker Lineage
The line from Wiener to Buterin runs through one continuous question: who controls the loop? Each node here is a generational answer.
The Hacker Lineage1948–
Cybernetics
The first attempt to write physics for minds.
Feedback loopBlack boxInformation theory
Open →The Hacker Lineage1959–
Hacker Culture
Information wants to be free — and somebody has to wire it.
The Hacker EthicInformation wants to be freeCode as speech
Open →The Hacker Lineage1975–
Personal Computing
Power to the people — by way of the silicon shop.
Bicycle for the mindDirect manipulationOpen vs. closed
Open →The Hacker Lineage1983–
Open Source
The cathedral and the bazaar — and the eventual takeover of the cathedral by the bazaar.
CopyleftPermissive licenseCathedral vs. bazaar
Open →The Hacker Lineage1992–
Cypherpunks
Privacy is the right to a self that the state cannot read.
Code is lawCrypto-anarchyPrivacy-preserving by default
Open →The Hacker Lineage1988–
Crypto-Anarchism
Sovereign individuals, sovereign keys.
Sovereign individualExit over voiceSelf-custody
Open →The Hacker Lineage2008–
Bitcoin & Hard-Money Maximalism
A neutral asset built out of math, watched by miners, immune to vote.
Proof-of-workDigital gold21M cap
Open →The Hacker Lineage2015–
Ethereum & Programmable Value
If Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is the digital legal system.
Smart contractCredible neutralityRollup-centric roadmap
Open →The Hacker Lineage2022–
Network States
A startup that builds a country, in reverse.
The One CommandmentCloud-first, land-secondExit communities
Open →◇ Cluster
The Venture Religion
Power-law mathematics turned into a moral system. The founder, the deal, the fund, the manifesto — each is a sacrament in this cluster's liturgy.
The Venture Religion1976–
Founder Mythology
The single individual as the unit of historical agency.
Reality distortion fieldFounder modeVision-led capital
Open →The Venture Religion1972–
Venture Capital Philosophy
Power-law thinking dressed in financial discipline.
Power-law returnsContrarian and correctMafia / network capital
Open →The Venture Religion2005–
Startup Theology
Y Combinator's transformation of business into vocation.
Make something people wantDo things that don't scaleDefault alive / default dead
Open →The Venture Religion2011–
Techno-Optimism
Progress is the actual moral imperative; everything else is friction.
Time to BuildHard techPmarca Doctrine
Open →◇ Cluster
AI Belief Systems
When intelligence becomes the question, the answer is always theological. From Kurzweil's calendar to Yudkowsky's warnings to e/acc's thermodynamic god — this is the cluster that organizes the AI era's soul.
AI Belief Systems1990–
Transhumanism
Humanity is the larval form; engineering is the metamorphosis.
SingularityWhole brain emulationLongevity escape velocity
Open →AI Belief Systems2007–
Rationalism (LessWrong)
Bayesian self-improvement as a religious practice.
Bayesian updatingSteelmanningMap and territory
Open →AI Belief Systems2009–
Effective Altruism
Utilitarianism as institutional engineering.
Cause prioritizationEarning to giveLongtermism
Open →AI Belief Systems2022–
Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)
Thermodynamics as a moral argument.
Thermodynamic godAccelerate or dieDissipative civilization
Open →AI Belief Systems2000–
AI Safety / Alignment
The discipline of trying to prevent the universe's largest unintended consequence.
AlignmentMesa-optimizationDeceptive alignment
Open →AI Belief Systems2010s–
AI as Religion
Eschatology in the form of compute.
AGI as eschatonThe Compute CathedralLiturgical product launch
Open →◇ Cluster
Empire & Power
Where the protocols meet the state. Chip controls, defense contracts, sovereign clouds, civilizational competition — the cluster in which infrastructure becomes geopolitics.
Empire & Power1995–
Techno-Libertarianism
Markets and protocols against the regulatory state.
Regulatory arbitragePermissionless innovationSovereign individual
Open →Empire & Power2004–
Platform Capitalism
Owning the layer where commerce happens, not the commerce.
Aggregation theoryNetwork effectTake rate
Open →Empire & Power2003–
Military-Tech Alliance
The Valley quietly returns to the Pentagon's lab budget.
Defense-tech thesisIn-Q-Tel pipelineSovereign compute
Open →Empire & Power2018–
Chip Geopolitics
The smallest objects on earth are now the largest political objects on earth.
Compute-as-strategic-assetExport controlsSmall yard, high fence
Open →Empire & Power2018–
U.S.–China AI Civilization Competition
Two civilizations training on each other's weights.
BifurcationSovereign AITalent flow
Open →◇ Cluster
Counter-Currents
Every ideology has a minority report. Postman, Lanier, Zuboff, Crawford, Gebru — the tradition of refusing the field's house style.
§ 02 · Character universe
The figures who installed the operating system.
1955–2011
Steve Jobs
The Founder of Founder Mythology
1971
Elon Musk
The Multi-Planetary Industrialist
1985
Sam Altman
The AGI Sherpa
1967
Peter Thiel
The Contrarian Monopolist
1971
Marc Andreessen
The Techno-Optimist Polemicist
1964
Paul Graham
The Startup Theologian
1994
Vitalik Buterin
The Crypto Polymath
1980
Balaji Srinivasan
The Network State Prophet
1963
Jensen Huang (黄仁勋)
The Compute Sovereign
1973
Larry Page
The Information Singulist
1974
Naval Ravikant
The Stoic Capital Aphorist
⚠ § 03 · Ideological wars
Where the doctrines actually fight.
Active conflict
OpenAI vs. Anthropic
The safety schism that became the industry's primary fault line.
OpenAI · the deployment-first labAnthropic · the safety-first lab
Active conflict
Open Weights vs. Closed Frontier
Whether the AI substrate is a Linux or a Windows.
Meta · Mistral · DeepSeek · Qwen · the open-weights coalitionOpenAI · Anthropic · Google DeepMind · xAI · the closed-frontier coalition
Active conflict
Accelerationism vs. Safety (e/acc vs. Decel)
The same disagreement, performed at higher temperature.
e/acc · accelerate AI developmentDecel · AI safety + pause coalition
Active conflict
U.S. vs. China · the Civilizational Race
Two AI stacks, two chip ecosystems, two definitions of victory.
United States · NVIDIA + frontier labs + cloud trinityChina · indigenous chips + open labs + national strategy
Active conflict
Centralized vs. Decentralized Intelligence
Whether intelligence is rented from three labs or owned by every user.
Centralized · OpenAI / Anthropic / Google as utility providersDecentralized · local models + crypto-AI + agent markets
✠ § 04 · Silicon Valley as religion
Compute cathedrals, founder prophets, AI eschatology.
Essay
AGI as God
A theology emerges, mostly without admitting it.
Essay
The Compute Cathedral
On the architectural form of a 200,000-GPU training cluster.
Essay
Venture Capital Firms as Churches
What gets distributed when a firm distributes a fund.
Essay
X/Twitter as Ideological Warfare Infrastructure
How a 280-character protocol became the public square of an industry that despises public squares.
Essay
AI Replacing Religion
What happens to the human need for meaning when the production of meaning is automated.
§ 05 · Method
Read this archive as a graph, not a feed.
Every node is connected to its lineage parents, its kin, and its adversaries. Hovering an ideology dims everything except its neighborhood. Clicking opens its dossier: origins, doctrine, lineage, conflicts, trajectory.
The archive is bilingual by construction. Every kernel paragraph, every section, every essay is written twice — not auto-translated. The Chinese register is its own register; the English register is its own register. Read either; ideally read both.
01
Origins
Where the doctrine actually came from — the institutions, texts, and personalities that gave it birth.
02
Doctrine
The set of propositions the doctrine actually asks you to believe. Stated plainly, without sympathy or hostility.
03
Lineage
The descendants. Who it became. What it now lives inside, often without acknowledging the parent.
04
Conflicts
Where the doctrine breaks. Its internal schisms and its external adversaries.
05
Trajectory
Where it appears to be heading, and the uncertainty around that estimate.