I’m focusing on the intersection of technology, media, and democracy. Subscribe by email to get every update.
When I was the west coast Director of Investments at Matter Ventures, an early-stage accelerator for media startups with the potential to create a more informed, inclusive, and empathetic society, I co-hosted our podcast. ...
March 31, 2023
In our house, Ms. Rachel of Songs For Littles has become a celebrity. She’s also the first YouTuber I’ve looked forward to new videos from since the year the service started - not so much for me, but for our little one, who is enthralled by every word.
The last YouTuber ...
March 27, 2023
For a period of about a year, and really after my mother’s death in 2021, I made a series of impulsive, very hurtful decisions that (to say the least) don’t live up to the values I talk about every day, and which I genuinely hold dear. As part of this ...
March 26, 2023
I had a revelation about the book I’m writing at about midnight last night: something that elevates the whole idea and ties it together in a way that I didn’t think I’d even been looking for. It makes the idea more resonant for me, which is what I need to ...
March 25, 2023
Axios reports that Facebook - sorry, Meta - is putting the metaverse on the back burner:
This week the firm announced a massive second round of layoffs. It recently killed off its Portal platform. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg, while not disavowing his metaverse dream, sounds more eager to talk about AI.
[…] ...
March 20, 2023
Revisiting my grandfather’s obituary:
But this is not Sidney’s first obituary. In May 1945 when he returned home from a four-month internment as a POW in Hitler’s Germany, the twenty-year old Sidney was surprised to find that his hometown Pennsylvania newspaper had published an account of his death at the hand ...
March 19, 2023
At this point I’m not sure how helpful it is to be publicly outraged over Fox News. There’s the catharsis of it, sure, but I’m increasingly of the mind that we shouldn’t give it oxygen.
Lately it’s been their redefinition of the word “woke” and, this week, the ludicrous idea that ...
March 16, 2023
A People’s History of Twitter, put on by Better Platform, runs tomorrow: a short, free, online event about who depended on Twitter, how it worked for good and bad, and what those communities should do now. It’s moderated by Wagatwe Wanjuki and Jacky Alciné, two people you should be following ...
March 15, 2023
I’m pretty excited about Automattic’s acquisition of Matthias Pfefferle’s ActivityPub plugin. I believe it will remain open source, but by acquiring the copyright to the code and hiring its developer to work on open web projects, Automattic is sending a signal about what it considers to be important.
The federated social ...
March 14, 2023
A lot of ink has been spilled over the demise of Silicon Valley Bank. I’ve never banked with them, and the current crisis doesn’t affect me directly today, but at least three of my prior employers were customers. While it was a regional bank, its collapse is the second-largest bank ...
March 12, 2023
I’m working on creating a list of metadata formats that a web publisher absolutely must support. These are formats that provide structured information in order to help with one of the following use cases:
Help platforms to display rich previews when a link from the publisher is shared
Help search engines to ...
March 8, 2023
This is my monthly roundup of the articles I found interesting. Here’s my list for February, 2023: a shorter list because it’s been a very hard month for lots of reasons.
Notable Articles
AI
Sci-Fi Mag Pauses Submissions Amid Flood of AI-Generated Short Stories. “The rise of AI-powered chatbots is wreaking havoc on ...
March 1, 2023