Category: Aesthetics

  • Experience Stacks and Matthew Perry (R.I.P.)

    When social media surfaced a clip of the late “Friends” star on “The West Wing,” it activated crashing contexts that explain how Experience Stacks work and why they can be powerful. I am more aware of Matthew Perry after his premature death last October than I ever was while he was still alive. In part…

  • What’s So Great About Steamboat Willie?

    The 1928 first appearance of the character who became Mickey Mouse entered the public domain on New Year’s Day. Should anybody care? Image created by DALL-E. On New Year’s Day, an avalanche of works from 1928 entered the public domain, their copyrights having expired after 95 years. Walt Disney’s almost eight minute Steamboat Willie cartoon earned a disproportionate…

  • Dueling Intelligences

    How realistic is the idea that flesh and blood actors will soon find themselves performing alongside long-dead movie stars? Image created by DALL-E. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called “The Only Living Boy,” about an actor, Tom, who is the only flesh and blood performer…

  • The Only Living Boy, a Microfiction

    What happens when real and virtual actors join forces in a new production of Shakespeare’s “Othello” on Broadway? As regular readers already know, I’ve been experimenting with microfictions, short SF stories (1,000 words or less) that help me explore and illustrate aspects of how our lives might evolve within digital transformation. Here, then, is another microfiction. Next…

  • Batman, Business, and the Incomparable

    How one Batman cartoon from 1992 demonstrates the strategic value of looking for what makes your business impossible to compare to the competition. The most important question in business isn’t “how does your offering compare to the competition?” Instead, the question to ask is “how is your offering incomparable?” What is it about your business that…

  • AI, SCOTUS, and Affirmative Action

    Colliding Trends: as the Supreme Court changed college admissions, Chief Justice Roberts argued that personal essays will be more important, but are applicants learning to write in the age of ChatGPT? When I give sharpest-edge trend keynotes, I often use the phrase “colliding trends” to describe how I approach peering into the future. As a…

  • Economist, DeSantis, Trump, Shakespeare

    The May 27th issue of The Economist has an in-depth briefing entitled, “A bungled coup: Ron DeSantis has little chance of beating Donald Trump to his party’s nomination.” The Economist is always literate, but it isn’t often literary. This piece persistently conjures up Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar throughout. That includes the opening line: “Belatedly and nervously, the would-be assassins have been…

  • The Anatomy of Delight

    A Broadway show, a YouTube video, and a classic movie lead me to explore how surprise comes from novelty on the other side of familiarity… & why that’s actionable for creators and business leaders. People call things delightful all the time, but what exactly is delight? It’s not just pleasure, nor is it simply more…

  • A Urinal in Troutdale: Shakespeare Sightings

    Shakespeare has been ever-present for centuries because of a peculiar quality of how the brand works, a quality that other brands can imitate. Here are two weird things about Shakespeare. First, while some people love Shakespeare, others view reading or seeing the plays as a punishment from God. Second, you cannot escape references to Shakespeare—not…

  • Keyword: Eventness

    Watching the series finale of “Star Trek: Picard” was a lonely exercise because most of the value of experiences comes from sharing them. Regret seldom punctuates my day-to-day life, but if I had Prof. Peabody’s Wayback Machine handy I would jump back a few days and then schlep up to Seattle or down to L.A.…