Supernova Labs  ·  Foundational Papers  ·  2026

Three Papers.
One Argument.

A trilogy of foundational papers on the capture of digital infrastructure — physical, attentional, and epistemic — and what comes after.

AuthorAdam Paigge
OrganisationSupernova Labs
LocationManchester, UK
Published2026

Each paper in this series names a capture — a layer of infrastructure that should be common but has been claimed by actors whose interests are misaligned with the people who depend on it. Each one traces the mechanism. Each one points toward a structural alternative.

Read in sequence, the three papers form a single argument: that the failures of the current digital order are not accidents, not bugs, and not addressable by better policy applied to existing architecture. They are properties of the architecture itself. The response has to be architectural.

Each paper stands alone. A reader who finds only one of them should come away with something complete, not a fragment pointing elsewhere.

The Papers
01 Paper
Physical Layer  ·  Protocol

Physical Reality
as Hypermedia

A proposal for an open protocol that makes physical objects addressable, experiences persistent, and ownership real — neutral by design, owned by no one, available to everyone.

Digital experience does not outlive the platforms that serve it. Every attempt to build a persistent layer over physical reality has reproduced the same failure mode: a central runtime, a central authority, a single point of capture. This paper proposes the atomic unit of a different approach — a physical object with a cryptographic identity, four layers each doing one thing, and structural neutrality baked into the protocol rather than promised by policy.

The Problem The Mechanism The Properties The Stack Prior Art Current State A Note on Naming
Download PDF Read online →
02 Paper
Attentional Layer  ·  Critique

Depression as a Feature:
The Manufactured Passive Subject

How short-form video platforms engineered a psychological state — not as a side effect of engagement optimisation, but as its most reliable output.

The anxiety, depression and attentional fragmentation associated with heavy short-form video consumption are not unintended consequences. They are the product. This paper traces the mechanism from algorithm character through psychoacoustic priming to what we name aroused passivity — a state of high somatic arousal and zero agency that keeps users consuming while preventing the organised action that constitutes genuine political power. When attentional real estate is commodified, the question is not whether this constitutes control. The question is who holds the title.

The Error of the Neutral Platform Engineered Attention Algorithm Character The Phonk Problem Aroused Passivity The New Feudalism Individual Agency
Download PDF New
03 Paper
Spatial Layer  ·  Architecture

The Web Already
Has a Z-Axis

Hypermedia as Entity-Component-System for a spatial internet — the web already has everything it needs except a z-axis.

The internet is the most successful Entity-Component-System ever built. URLs are entities, media types are components, protocols are systems. Every attempt to build a metaverse has failed because it tried to replace this architecture instead of extending it with the one missing primitive: a shared coordinate system that gives existing web entities a position in navigable three-dimensional space. This paper describes that extension — the protocol stack, the four concerns of the spatial system, and the implementation path using components that already exist and work. No company owns this. It is the web. It always was.

The Observation Why Metaverse Failed ECS Made Explicit The Spatial System Protocol Stack Implementation Path The Argument
Download PDF New
The Position
"The failures of the current digital order are not accidents, not bugs, and not addressable by better policy applied to existing architecture. They are properties of the architecture itself. The response has to be architectural."

About Supernova Labs

Supernova Labs is an independent R&D organisation based in Manchester, UK, working on open spaceplane technology, orbital navigation, and adjacent research — including the foundational papers collected here.

Founded in 2015 with a self-described identity of rebellion: refusing to operate on the world's terms, open source as a strategic moat, explicitly anti-VC.

supernovalabs.co.uk

Contact

Questions, collaboration proposals, or responses to the arguments in these papers are welcome.

adam@supernovalabs.co.uk

Built with ♥️ & determination, not by VC.