Silicon dreams: how french philosophers accidentally described Web3 decades ahead of time
French theory is often caricatured as dense, abstract, and detached from the real world. But when you revisit the work of thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Paul Virilio, and others, a surprising pattern emerges: long before anyone imagined Web3, these philosophers were already sketching out the dynamics that would later shape the modern internet, crypto networks, NFTs, DAOs, surveillance systems, and the attention economy.
Their ideas, which can be a bit mysterious or sometimes seem like they predict the future, really feel like plans for a world filled with blockchains, algorithms, and digital identities today.
Deleuze & Guattari: networks vs. hierarchies
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari contrasted two types of systems: the rigid, hierarchical “tree” and the flexible, interconnected “rhizome.”
A tree has a single root and trunk—like a centralized bank, a Big Tech platform, or a server that becomes a bottleneck for an entire system.
A rhizome, by contrast, spreads horizontally. There’s no beginning or end, and cutting one section doesn’t kill the whole organism.
Bitcoin and other peer-to-peer systems are much closer to this rhizomatic model: no central server, no gatekeeper, no single point of failure. But as many critics note, modern crypto projects sometimes drift back toward hierarchy by relying on centralized infrastructure, blacklisted stablecoins, and major exchanges.
DAOs—decentralized autonomous organizations—represent an attempt to reclaim the rhizome and push governance out to the edges.
Baudrillard: simulations, signals, and the hyperreal
Baudrillard never lived to see NFTs or DeFi, but his theories feel eerily on point. He described a world where signs no longer represent reality—they replace it.
His four stages of the sign align uncannily with the history of money:
- Gold: value tied to physical reality
- Paper money: value partially abstracted
- Fiat currency: value detached from any backing
- Cryptocurrencies: pure symbols that reference nothing but themselves
In crypto, code doesn’t just describe reality—it becomes reality. Smart contracts don’t outline agreements; they execute them. Narrative becomes as important as fundamentals.
NFTs, meanwhile, are Baudrillard’s simulacra made literal: digital objects that point only to themselves, gaining value purely from belief and hype.
Metaverses and generative AI push this even further, creating spaces where digital representations feel more real—and more influential—than the physical world.
Foucault: the panopticon goes digital
Foucault reinterpreted Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the worldwide surveillance system —a circular prison with an invisible guard—to explore how modern societies discipline people through the possibility of constant observation.
The internet, with its trackers, cookies, and behavioral algorithms, has become a worldwide surveillance system. We never fully know when we’re being watched, but we assume we might be, so we self-censor.
Crypto was supposed to be an escape, but its transparency introduces new tensions. Public blockchains record everything, forever. Analytics firms map wallets, turning anonymity into traceability. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) take this further, potentially giving governments fine-grained control over how people spend.
Zero-knowledge proofs offer a possible escape—ways to prove something is true without revealing the underlying information.
Virilio: technology, speed, and the inevitable crash
Paul Virilio argued that every new technology comes bundled with its own disaster: invent the airplane, and the plane crash follows.
He saw modern power as a function of speed—something echoed today in high-frequency trading and blockchain bots that act in microseconds. Markets that operate too fast for humans to influence become susceptible to sudden, system-wide crashes.
The Terra collapse is a recent example: everything unraveled globally in minutes.
DeFi’s 24/7, real-time nature embodies Virilio’s “integral accident”: failures that amplify instantly across the network.
Debord: the spectacle goes tokenized
Guy Debord argued that modern life had shifted from lived experience to mediated appearance—people relate through images, not reality.
Online, attention becomes currency. Social networks turn everyday life into performance. Web3 builds on this with NFTs, profile-picture communities, governance tokens, and “social capital” encoded on the blockchain.
In this framework, tokens aren’t just financial instruments—they’re social symbols, ways of presenting identity within digital tribes.
Latour: smart contracts as actors
Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory treats humans and non-human entities (objects, technologies, systems) as co-participants in shaping reality.
A smart contract, in this sense, is not a passive tool—it’s an actor with agency. It can hold assets, execute decisions, and enforce outcomes without human intervention.
The 2016 DAO hack underscored this: the code behaved exactly as written, even though the outcome was catastrophic. The community’s decision to fork Ethereum showed that humans and code are now intertwined actors negotiating authority.
Lyotard: the decline of big narratives
Lyotard believed grand narratives—religion, progress, even “the market”—were breaking down and being replaced by small, localized stories.
Crypto is a perfect example. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and hundreds of other chains each have their own culture, mythology, and worldview.
But even in a decentralized world, new grand narratives emerge: “Bitcoin fixes this,” “Web3 will replace the internet,” “AI will save everything.”
Lyotard cautioned against believing too strongly in any universal salvation.
Where this leaves us
Seen through the lens of these thinkers, Web3 isn’t just a technological shift—it’s a philosophical one. A few themes stand out:
- Decentralization vs. control: The tug-of-war between networked freedom and hierarchical power structures is far from over.
- Hyperreality dominates: AI, metaverses, and digital assets blur the line between the real and the simulated.
- Surveillance intensifies: Privacy becomes a luxury, not a default; cryptography becomes a shield.
- Speed amplifies risk: Faster systems produce faster failures.
- Technology shapes society: Code doesn’t just empower people—sometimes it replaces them as decision-makers.
The message is clear: technology isn’t neutral. It carries underlying politics, assumptions, and risks. French theorists may not have set out to predict Web3, but their ideas offer valuable tools for understanding the world we’re racing toward.
