Category: Culture

  • Why Nikki Haley Should Stay in the Race

    Conventional wisdom doesn’t apply in unconventional times, plus two not-so-secret rules of presidential politics.  Back in 2017, film director Judd Apatow shared an only slightly tongue in cheek rule about presidential politics: the funnier candidate always wins. “Reagan was funny. Bill Clinton was funny. Bush was funnier than Gore. Obama was funnier than probably anybody who’s…

  • TV Is Doing Just Fine… For Now

    A new op-ed about the possible end of “peak TV” misses the real story.  Film historian and critic Peter Biskind’s op-ed in The New York Times hangs black crepe, mourning the end of peak TV. The funeral came at last week’s Emmy Awards, with an open casket where viewers could see the cast of Succession. Biskind’s piece went…

  • 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…

  • Elon’s Just Zis Guy, Y’know?

    What the chattering classes missed about Musk’s very busy two weeks in November. (Image created by Ideogram.ai.) There’s a recurring segment on Sesame Street called “three of these kids belong together” where the viewer’s job is to identify a fourth kid playing a different sport, not getting rained on, etc. Let’s play that game with a slice…

  • Tribal Shopping

    How realistic is the idea that economic incentives will coax people to choose a single digital ecosystem? (Image created with Adobe Firefly.) Writing near future science fiction lets me exaggerate a handful of features of life today to see what life tomorrow might look like. When I put these exaggerations into a story, it makes…

  • Bubbles

    What happens when economic incentives coax people to choose a single digital ecosystem?  I’m trying something experimental this issue: a microfiction, short Sci Fi story (under 1,000 words) to illustrate something about how our lives might evolve within digital transformation. Please take a look and let me know what you think. (FYI: the “bubbles” of…

  • AI and the Productivity Lie

    Think twice about the pervasive idea that Generative AI is going to make you more productive. A look back on how email transformed our lives gives a hint about what’s coming with Gen AI. A notion that pops up in many conversations about the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—particularly Generative AI (Gen AI)—is that this…

  • Analog Power-Ups and Relationship Half Lives

    Without interaction, human relationships wither, but some interactions are more powerful than others. I don’t remember what prompted the question, but about a month ago I posted this on Facebook: “Hive Mind: Is there a word for a quip that comes to you far too late but that—if you’d thought of it at the time—would…

  • Death is Analog

    We spend so much of our lives split between our digital and analog worlds, but that changes when somebody dies. When the phone rings before 6am it tends not to be good news. Saturday, September 9. Mom. “Evan died.” My younger brother. He was 52. In life, our attention bounces between digital and analog worlds,…