Sobremesa(tech) - The Western OS
For centuries, "the West" behaved less like a geography and more like a default setting.
From Plato and Aristotle, through Locke and Kant, to Silicon Valley and venture capital, the West didn't just build institutions. It built the assumptions underneath them. Individual rights. Rational inquiry. Markets. Progress as destiny.
For a long time, that system felt stable. But what happens when the operating system begins to glitch?
The 21st century feels different. And technology sits directly on the fault line.
Artificial intelligence is being designed inside Western labs, regulated in Brussels, financed through American capital — while China advances its own model of technological modernity under very different political assumptions. This isn't simply a race for faster models or larger datasets. It's a quiet divergence in values.
And perhaps the deeper question isn't whether the West is falling behind. It's whether its philosophical foundations, autonomy, rationality, universalis, can survive the very systems they helped bring into existence.
To guide that conversation, we're joined by Balder Hageraats, Senior Partner at ReSeT, advisor to governments and multinationals, professor of International Relations at IE University, and co-host of The Western Bubble, a podcast that has been asking exactly this kind of question for years.
Along the way, we'll ask some uncomfortable things:
What exactly is "the West", a philosophy, a myth, a power structure?
Is liberal democracy compatible with AI-scale surveillance and platform capitalism?
Does technological acceleration strengthen Western dominance, or quietly hollow it out?
🍷 The ticket includes 2 drinks and some snacks.
💡 Refund policy: Refunds are not available. If you choose not to come after that, you’re welcome to sell your ticket in the Sobremesa group or to a friend, just send us a quick message at +35691501916 to let us know.