I did Recode’s podcast with Peter Kafka last Wednesday, the afternoon of the Gawker reunion/wake. So naturally we talked about that a bit. And the Observer, and working for Jared Kushner (who is now less known as the publisher of the Observer than Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor). And virtual Read More
One Gawker.com For Sale, Slightly Used
I’ve written twice about the Peter Thiel situation (in more than 140 characters, anyway), here and here, and I’m too burned out on the subject to really respond to this epic word salad of disingenuousness. But I wonder how many Silicon Valley people are now backing away from Thiel slowly. Read More
Hello, Fellow Simulated Humans! (Maybe)
I don’t actually believe it’s likely that we’re all living in a computer simulation, per Elon Musk, (though I do believe it’s technically possible) but I think it’s a good analogy for talking about VR and what constitutes an immersive experience. I talked about it a bit a few weeks Read More
Track Changes Podcast
I did the Track Changes podcast with Postlight’s Paul Ford and Rich Ziade a few weeks ago, and the episode went live yesterday. In it, we talk about our mutual distaste for job stability, what happened when Rich did Sport’s Illustrated’s swimsuit issue VR sim, what I got paid at Read More
This Is Basically A Free Ad For Matt Levine’s Newsletter
Someone asked me in an interview about my media consumption habits, and they’re pretty irregular. There are only a handful of sites I go to regularly, and like most people, I use social media to keep up with breaking news. But I do have a handful of newsletter subs I Read More
#FirstSevenJobs
I kind of like the #FirstSevenJobs meme because it’s interesting to see how people started out (and to speculate shamelessly and wildly about what it means. ) I had my first seven jobs before I graduated from college–in part, because I had a part-time job as soon as I was Read More
Online Trolls, Donald Trump, Being Civil on the Internet
Yesterday I Anil Dash, Jeff Jarvis and I had a Facebook Live conversation about online trolling for Jeff’s CUNY show, DotNYC. Topics covered: Donald Trump, blog comments, Julian Assange, kids on the Internet, Gawker, de-escalating arguments online, anonymity vs. pseudonymity, and lots of other web nerdery. You can watch it here.
Kevin Kelly on VR, His New Book, and Digital Socialism
I interviewed Kevin Kelly a couple of weeks ago to talk about his new book, The Inevitable: Understanding 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. We also talked about VR. A lot. Kelly hadn’t seen Magic Leap (or Meta or the Hololens) yet when he turned in the manuscript Read More
Dumb Widdle Girl Syndrome
I wrote a thing for There Is Only R about women in tech and the importance of signaling if you’re in a leadership position. And something I think of as “dumb widdle girl” syndrome where women’s views and expertise are dismissed by people who assume they have none of the Read More
A Roller Coaster in Every Phone
Virtual reality is often dismissed as elite gamer technology–and some of it is, but it’s a narrow swath. Today on There Is Only R, Zimbabwean entrepreneur Itai Kaitano writes about the promise of mobile VR in developing countries: It’s one thing for us in the privileged west to turn our Read More