Category: Internet

  • Analog Lives in a Digital World

    What makes things special, memorable, satisfying often has less to do with the things themselves than with the context where we experience them. Some mysteries are eternal. If the Coyote can afford all those expensive items sold by the Acme Company, then why doesn’t he just visit a desert KFC to eat plumper poultry than…

  • What Fox News Should Have Said

    A new campaign by Check My Ads to get advertisers to stop supporting the conservative news network prompted an entirely inadequate response.  On Thursday, the folks at Check My Ads received widespread coverage about their new campaign to stop advertisers from supporting Fox News. The three Check My Ads founders—Claire Atkin, Nandini Jammi, and Mikel…

  • A Simple Test for What Counts as “The Metaverse”

    Lots of walled gardens and videogame platforms are now touting themselves as part of the metaverse, but there’s an easy way to tell if it’s true. Plus, revising Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Two shorter (although slightly connected) main stories this week… 1. Revisiting Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” If you subscribe to…

  • The Web3/Creator Paradox

    The latest phase of the digital revolution is a Read/Write/Own structure where more culture creators can join a new Artistic Middle Class… maybe. Calling something “Web3” makes it sound like everybody agrees on what it means. That’s not the case: we’re at the start of our Web3 journey. It might be more accurate to call it Web3.001.…

  • The Fragile Glory of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” plus… Why Apple is the right acquirer for Twitter

    Editor’s Notes: Two smaller stories this week If you like these posts, please subscribe to the newsletter version, which has lots of extra goodies and comes direct to your inbox. From the “I was right” department: Was anybody surprised when Elon Musk put his Twitter acquisition on hold? He has already gotten all of the value out…

  • Distraction Audits & Why to Do One

    It’s never been harder to pay attention to the things we care about. The world is bursting with information. The designers of the devices and applications that we use to get that information work hard to turn us into stimulation addicts, doom scrolling and clicking to get another dopamine hit of input regardless of its…

  • Why Amazon Will Buy Starbucks

    I’m not usually one for predictions with due dates. I see the trends, where the dominos are falling, but spotting precisely when a trend will happen is harder. This time, though, I’ll go out on a limb because two events this week have combined to make me think that Amazon will buy Starbucks within the…

  • Why Facebook is Creepier than Google

    A 2/18 article in the Wall Street Journal by Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin, and Salvador Rodriguez—Inside Facebook’s $10 Billion Breakup With Advertisers—shows that when it comes to restraining Facebook from tracking us the real power doesn’t lie with the U.S. Federal Government, which is still spinning its wheels on any regulation of Big Tech. (Congressional…

  • NFTs, 5G, HUD: Colliding Trends and the Intermediate Future

    I’m an NFT skeptic. They seem like digital litter—cybernetic landfill that will clutter the e-commons like plastic bags blowing across a public park. This skepticism is unusual for me. I’m usually an early adopter, as the elephants graveyard in my garage of once exciting/now vanished tech will attest. Blockchain makes sense when it comes to…

  • Secret Stories: Microsoft, Activision, Spotify, Joe Rogan, Neil Young, Facebook

    When a big business story hits I try to ask myself, “what else is going on?”  When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, for example, the obvious story was that the ecommerce giant wanted to tap into the nearly $800B annual U.S. grocery business. Less obvious was that by buying Whole Foods Amazon also acquired…