If predictions are like baseball, I’m bound to have a bad year in 2019, given how well things went the last time around. And given how my own interests, work life, and physical location have changed of late, I’m not entirely sure what might spring from this particular session at the keyboard.
But as I’ve noted in previous versions of this post (all 15 of them are linked at the bottom), I do these predictions in something of a fugue state – I don’t prepare in advance. I just sit down, stare at a blank page, and start to write.
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I first moved to the Bay area in 1983. I graduated from high school, spent my summer as an exchange student/day laborer in England (long story), then began studies at Berkeley, where I had a Navy scholarship (another long story).
1983. 35 years ago.
1983 was one year before the introduction of the Macintosh (my first job was covering Apple and the Mac). Ten years before the debut of Wired magazine. Twenty years before I began writing The Search, launching Web 2.0, and imagining what became Federated Media. And thirty years before we launched NewCo and the Shift Forum. It’s a … long fucking time ago.
Read MoreInstead of kicking data brokers off its platform, Facebook should empower its entire user base to be their own brokers of data.
Late last week Facebook announced it would eliminate all third-party data brokers from its platform. It framed this announcement as a response to the slow motion train wreck that is the Cambridge Analytica story. Just as it painted Cambridge as a “bad actor” for compromising its users’ data, Facebook has now vilified hundreds of companies who have provided it fuel for its core business model, a model that remains at the center of its current travails.
Read MoreWith the launch of 1.1.1.1, Cloudflare thumbs its nose at ISPs and the big platforms (AKA Google), and once again declares itself a business willing to start, and lead, tech’s toughest conversations
Over the past year Cloudflare became best known not for the impressive services it has built in the Internet networking space, but for an action taken by its CEO Matthew Prince during the swirl following Trump’s Charlottesville comments. After initially defending the free speech rights of its neo-Nazi customer The Daily Stormer, Prince finally had enough. When the site claimed Cloudflare secretly supported its hateful philosophy, Prince kicked the site off the company’s network.
Read MoreJPB was a conjurer, a convener, a cipher and an empath
Barlow died this week and since hearing of it, 24 hours ago, I’ve struggled with what to do. Then I got a note this morning from the fellow managing his “BarlowFriendz” email list, informing thousands of us of Barlow’s death. Of course, most of us already knew, but getting a missive from that listserv was like a bolt from the grave — I half expected a post-mortem manifesto from the man, and god knows our world needs one. Instead it was a sad and perfunctory announcement of his passing from the fellow JPB had entrusted to manage his email list.
Read MoreA tech giant partners with a bioinformatics pioneer to create an entirely new kind of genetic map.
About halfway through the first season of Shift Dialogs, we started asking our guests the same question: “What advice would you give your 20-year old self?”
Below are answers from a diverse group of folks: Nathan Blecharczyk of Airbnb, Debby Hopkins of Citi, Evan Williams of Medium, Marc Pritchard of P&G, and Bruce Aust of Nasdaq.
It’s been interesting to move my main focus of writing from a personal blog to a publication in-the-making. I’ll have more thoughts about that this weekend here. But in the meantime, if you’re wondering what I’m thinking and writing about, well, most of that work is here. Here are my latest columns:
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The first ever NewCo Boston goes off in less than two weeks, and I’ve been studying the schedule and making my picks for the companies I most want to visit. The lineup is insanely great – Boston is brimming with innovative NewCos, 79 of which will open their doors on April 27th. Thanks to our partners at MassTLC – you guys really know how to do it right!
Tuesday, April 26th, 6 pm: VIP Kick-off & Reception @ Hatch Fenway NewCo Boston kicks off at Hatch Fenway, a NewCo incubator that was once an industrial hub. Mingle, swill, and get inspired by host company CEOs, city leaders, and VIP ticket holders alike.
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