My take on the deeper issues for democracy of Musk’s on-again/off-again bid for Twitter, Boiling Elon Musk — Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?, has been published on Techdirt. The boiling frog syndrome suggests that if a frog jumps into a pot of boiling water, it immediately jumps…

Beyond the hope, fear, and loathing wrapped in the enigma of Elon Musk’s Twitter, there are some hints of possible blue skies and sunlight, whatever your politics. A new architecture document from the Bluesky project that Jack Dorsey funded points to an important strategy for how that might be achieved…

This article in Tech Policy Press is the second in a series with Chris Riley (4/27/22) We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. (Marshall McLuhan) Capsule: Social media do not behave like other media. Speech is not primarily broadcast, as through megaphones and amplification but rather, propagates…

This article in Tech Policy Press is the first in a series with Chris Riley (2/27/22) It is the policy of the United States…to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals…who use the Internet…” (from Section 230 of the Communications Decency…

In his eloquent exploration of how “Disinformation Is a Threat to Our Democracy,” Barack Obama is channeling Marshall McLuhan's media ecology perspective. Chris Riley and I dig deeper into the lessons of that perspective in our new piece in Tech Policy Press, “Understanding Social Media: An Increasingly Reflexive Extension of…

Are You Covidscuous? Have you been swapping air with those who are? Covidscuous, adj. (co-vid-skyoo-us), Covidscuity, n. — definition: demonstrating or implying an undiscriminating or unselective approach; indiscriminate or casual — in regard to Covid contagion risks to oneself and those around one. We seem to lack a word for…

My short article in Tech Policy Press focuses on The Ghost of Surveillance Capitalism Future, AKA, The Ghost of Social Media Future. Concerned about what Facebook and other platforms know about you and use to manipulate you now? The “mind-reading” power of “biometric psychography” will make that look like the…

Something I wrote about in 2006 has now become a very timely cultural and business opportunity. As the Wall Street Journal reports, The Future of Movie Theaters Is More Than Just Movies: The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the movie-theater industry, forcing cinema owners to reimagine how their spaces can…