Media & Entertainment

I've been joking that my blog has become the "Elon Channel," where it's "All Elon, All the Time." In case you missed it, the organization we knew as Twitter is gone. It took Elon less than a week to fire half the staff and demolish years of goodwill. All that remains is a tech stack and a skeleton crew. Oh, and the threat of thermonuclear name & shame. Continue Reading →

Elon Musk recently wrote, "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences," he followed with, "Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world." Twitter cannot serve two masters. So, which will it be, "a free-for-all hellscape," or "the most respected advertising platform in the world." Continue Reading →

When someone says "the metaverse," what do they mean? At the moment, the observable metaverse is a continuum that spans experiences from virtual reality (VR) through mixed reality (MR) to augmented reality (AR). The experiences are different, but some of the most successful metaverse projects share many common creative and technological attributes. What are they? To help figure it out, we've been developing a framework we call the Standard Model of the Metaverse. Continue Reading →

I was honored to be asked to do the opening keynote at Block Im Park (Block in the Park) at Frankfurt's Deutsche Bank Park this past week. Hosted by Eintracht Frankfurt, it was an extraordinarily diverse gathering of business and tech professionals focused on innovation. Continue Reading →

The most significant event in the short history of Web3 will most likely occur on September 15, 2022. That’s when Ethereum, the largest smart contract blockchain (with the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap), is now scheduled to enact an existential operational change. If it fails, “The Merge,” as it is colloquially called, is almost sure to take the crypto markets down with it. But even if The Merge is 100 percent successful, it will come with profound implications regarding censorship, regulation, and the future of money. Continue Reading →

Jason M. Allen's piece "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" recently won first prize at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition in the category of "digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography." It was created using an AI image generator known as Midjourney and the human competitors are furious. Should they be? Continue Reading →

There's a relatively new acronym in the media business: FAST. It stands for Free Advertiser-supported Streaming Television. For all practical purposes, FAST is good, old-fashioned broadcast television delivered over the public internet (as opposed to via an antenna or cable or satellite). In the not-so-distant past, this kind of delivery was called "over the top" or OTT, but the defining differences are that FAST is free (except for the cost of your internet access), and the programs are scheduled at specific times, exactly the same way linear, broadcast TV channels are scheduled. Does it matter how the signal is delivered to consumers? Think about this... Continue Reading →

Ever wonder how misinformation goes viral? Let's follow a typo made by CNBC as it propagates across the Web. The story quotes a post from Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner about the recent Instagram redesign. It's an object lesson about the truly revolting lack of journalistic standards that pervade our digital lives. Continue Reading →

You just purchased your first NFT. Where is it? Is it sitting in your account on the marketplace you purchased it from? Do they have custody of your digital asset or do you? Did you transfer your NFT to your crypto wallet? If so, do you believe your new NFT is actually in your wallet? It isn't. That's not how this works. Here's what is really in your wallet. Continue Reading →

Elon Musk and Twitter are probably going to court over whether he should be forced to buy the social media company for $44 billion. He's trying to back out of the deal because he thinks Twitter is lying about the number of bots and fake accounts on the platform. But it's not just about the bots. Twitter has not had a substantial increase in users since 2016 – which makes you wonder why Elon ever considered buying the platform. But the story gets worse, because Twitter's woes are not even a little bit new. Continue Reading →