According to the Washington Post, European regulators and airlines are now investigating ways to enable 5G mobile phone calls on airplanes. Right now, you can’t do this because mobile phones on planes need to be in “airplane mode” — that is, not connected to mobile antennas. The ostensible reason is that mobile phone frequencies interfere…
Imagine that you had a friend who was a fairly good conversationalist but whose often got facts wrong. What would you think of such a person? Because that is what ChatGPT is. A bullshitter. This, surprisingly, is not a criticism. As it turns out, the AI required to figure out how to write a convincing…
I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT, an AI writing tool from Open AI. It is amazing. In contrast to previous AI writing tools, which were transparently awful, this one is quite good. I am not an AI expert, so don’t ask me how it works. I am a writing expert, so my question is this:…
Actually, that headline is redundant. All edits are annoying. If you care about your writing, that means you probably thought it was pretty good. So who is this other person to come in and change it? Who do they think they are? Well, they’re the person whose job it is to make your writing the…
Disruptive innovation requires viewing the world differently from conventional wisdom. Disruptors who succeed manage to change the conventional wisdom. Disruptors who fail end up victims of the conventional wisdom. And that includes the conventional wisdom inherent in government regulation Disruptors who ignored the rules YouTube was built on pirated, copyrighted content. It violated rules and…
I’ve been studying social media for 16 years. I think what Charlene Li and I observed back then is still true. People want to connect with friends. People want to connect with strangers with whom they share an interest. People want to engage intellectually with strangers. Or at least, they used to. Back when blogs…
Things break on the internet. The question is: is there anyone left to fix them? And how much of the resulting friction causes people to leave you for a competitor? Friction, like entropy, is ever-increasing Code is forever. It should keep working. But it requires maintenance. Why? Because it does not exist in a vacuum….
We’re not paying enough attention to the financing of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase. It explains why he’s flailing now, and points to a shocking future for the social network. Where did Musk get the money to buy Twitter, and why does it matter? Of the $44 billion it took to buy Twitter, about $24 billion…
The hardest insight for anyone working in or through social media is this: No matter what you think you own or control, you are not in charge. The participants are. And they will do whatever they want, in spite of (and sometimes because of) any efforts you make to channel, guide, or block them. I…