Earlier this week I met a fellow who, among very many other things, is a member of a bicycling group based where I live. Given that I live in a pretty small community, I was stunned I’d never heard of the club, which has 900 active members and runs four or five organized rides a week. How’d I miss it?
Well, the fellow told me, it’s a Facebook group. You should join! For the first time in ages, I fired up Facebook with the intention of actually doing something useful. I applied to join the group, then promptly forgot about it. I lost the habit of checking into Facebook more than a decade ago, and I have all notifications from the app turned off.
Well, 2024 is in the books, and it’s time to grade my own homework. One year ago I posted my 2024 predictions, fresh off a so-so showing in 2023. So how’d I do this time? Pretty well, actually. To the results:
But Progress Continues… For my second prediction, I gave myself something of an out – yes, AI will take a pause, but there will still be a lot of interesting developments. And progress did indeed continue – tens of thousands of startups are toiling away at possible breakthrough applications, Google released Gemini, NotebookLM, and integrated Gemini into its core search and office products, OpenAI released SearchGPT and its reasoning models, AI-driven video became a reality at scale, Apple launched “Intelligence,” and everyone was madly trying to make “the agentic web” a thing (more on that in my 2025 predictions). So, check, lots of progress despite the pause.
Big Tech’s Mid-life Crisis. “Every year it gets more difficult for the Amazons, Google, and Apples of the world to continue their ever-upward march” I wrote in defense of my third prediction, which inferred that the Apples, Googles, and Amazons of the world would, by year’s end, be seen in a worse light than at the start of 2024 (though I also said their stock prices would not suffer, and I certainly got that right!). While it’s not easy to prove, I think the narrative has largely held up. My reasoning here was that the tech industry was going to have to figure out what its role was in the world, now that it holds nearly limitless power. And I think that’s exactly what we got: The phrase “mid life crisis” certainly comes to mind for a particularly annoying group of big tech leaders – Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos and their peers, all of whom became players in a particularly florid drama involving acting out about their own power, kissing rings to protect their wealth, defending their turf from endless government actions, creating self-glorifying ads that miss the point entirely, and throwing tin-eared parties for themselves all along the way. I’ll give myself a win here, though I’ll also admit it was a hard one to pin down.
Fediverse Rising. For my fourth prediction I held that the protocol-driven “fediverse” would have a good year. This played out, both through the rise of Threads throughout the year (now at more than 100mm DAUs, and 275mm MAUs), and the late surge of interest in Bluesky, which is based on a similar federated approach. It didn’t hurt that sentiment around X plummeted, and many social media players began moving off TikTok for fear of a government ban currently slated for late January. Overall, I’d grade this one a win.
Apple Gets Bitten. I predicted Apple would spend the year dealing with its inherent growth issues, adding that the company would come to be understood as a major player in the advertising business, which would hurt its self-proclaimed status as a privacy champion. That’s exactly what happened in the Spring, when the size of Google’s payments to Apple came to light as part of the DOJ’s antitrust suit against the search giant. Apple also had a miserable year when it came to new product releases: The Vision Pro failed to impress (and sold far fewer units than predicted), Apple released an absolutely tone-deaf ad for its new iPad, and its “Intelligence” product launched to less than stellar reviews. So yes, Apple did get bitten in 2024, but as I also predicted, the company’s stock was still up and to the right. For now, anyway.
Bright Spots Emerge in Media. I know, it was mostly doom and gloom in media again this year. But not if you’re tracking new approaches to the media game – and there were plenty of them, if you looked hard enough. First off, of course, is the rise of “creators” and “influencers” – a recent Pew study found that one in five Americans now get their news from influencers, and that figure rises to 37 percent for those under 30. Add in AI-driven aggregation apps (Particle, Bulletin et al), the continued rise of newsletter platforms like Substack and beehiiv, the rush to Bluesky – one might make the case that media was starting to look interesting again in 2024. And hey, DOC launched too! But to be honest, I didn’t find enough “bright spots” to confidently claim this prediction as a win. I’ll take a push here.
Cars Will Keep Their Drivers. OK, one could argue that since Waymo rolled out in San Francisco and several other cities this past year, I was utterly wrong when I wrote “even if driverless tech was ready for prime time, municipalities – whose approvals matter more than state and federal governments – are decidedly not.” Then again, a limited roll out in a handful of cities does not make 2024 “the year of the driverless car.” But, I know when I’m wrong, and I’ll grade this prediction a fail.
Enterprise Data Moves Beyond Marketing. Nope – at least not in a way that anyone can explain. While it’s true that the entire corporate world is in a tizzy about data-driven AI models that will change….everything, I’m not seeing much proof out there, at least not yet. I wrote that “this coming year we’ll see at least a few touchstone examples of data-driven applications from enterprise players that change the way B2B leaders consider justifying their investments in IT. And for once, it won’t be to make a marketing campaign more efficient.” I sense this is happening, but I just don’t have the examples to show it. I’d love to hear about examples that prove me right, but…I don’t have any to grade myself as anything other than a push.
TheNew York Times Loses Its Suit Against AI. A clear miss, because the suit is ongoing, though it certainly looks like the Times is on the wrong side of this from an industry perspective (more and more media companies are closing their eyes, hoping for the best, and taking the money).
Well, that’s the scorecard: Of nine predictions, five wins, two pushes, and two misses. Not bad, but also not my best year either. Next week I’ll publish my 2025 predictions – look for hot takes on AI agents, whether TikTok will actually be banned, and Big Tech’s banner year. Until then, thanks as always for reading, and have a wonderful holiday season.
It’s been quiet here for a few months. Yesterday I posted a longish piece on LinkedIn explaining why, and for those of you wondering what I’ve been up to lately, I figured I’d repost it here….
Late last year I wrote about my transition from being work-driven to being life-driven. It hit a chord – many of you are on similar journeys, particularly those of us who are looking toward, and past, middle age. Buried a couple of thousand words into that post, in the section about what I was up to after selling The Recount, was this line: “I’m helping to stand up a new kind of gathering at the intersection of science, medicine, and longevity.” My partners and I have spent the past six months developing that gathering, and I’m very proud to announce it’s got a name, a date, and most importantly, a program with a purpose.
My co-founders Dr. Jordan Shlain and Kevin Ryan and I have christened the community we’re forming DOC. Our inaugural gathering is October 24th – 26th at The Estate Yountville in Napa, California. DOC is invitation only and close to full, but if you’re interested in learning more, you can request an invite here.
A quick note to point you toward this piece I wrote for P&G’s Signal publication. Since its inception, I’ve been co-editor of the monthly outlet, which covers innovation in large enterprise. This month I went in search of proof that the hype around generative AI – fueled in large part by both Google and Microsoft – had any merit. Turns out, it actually does. It’s still early, but the two examples I found, at Air India and Bayer, show tangible results and some promising implications for more impact to come.
Back in the day, I used to cover what was once called “corporate computing.” I got to dust off some old skills and talk to some interesting folks. Give it a read, and let me know what you think.
But despite the fact that the ACC was launched with much fanfare last Fall, my wife and I had never heard of it. We have three young adult children whose future feels in doubt because of climate change, and they’d never heard of it either – not a good sign for a program that hopes to recruit tens of thousands of people just like them. All five of us feel like we’re reasonably well informed. I mean, we read The New York Times, don’t we?
It’s disconcerting when your phone doesn’t know you anymore.
I’ve had a Google phone for more than a decade, from its initial incarnation as the “Nexus” to its current apex form, the Pixel 8 Pro. Somewhere along the way, Google introduced a Google News feed “left of home,” that valuable real estate that smartphone users access by swiping right from the home screen. My old Pixels reliably gave me a newsfeed that, despite its wonkiness, gave me a respectable set of news stories patterned somewhat to my actual interests. Unfortunately, it seemed highly attuned to my search and location histories, so if I was buying headphones or reading about a wind farm off Rhode Island, my “news” stories would instantly shift to local news from Providence, or junky reviews of electronics I’d never want to buy. But it was worth putting up with, because it gave me useful news and information most of the time.
My new Pixel 8 (I got it for myself as a Christmas present!) effortlessly ported all my apps, and even most of my passwords and permissions, but when I checked my left of home newsfeed yesterday, it seemed to have utterly lost its way. Besides being convinced that I somehow have a fetish for stories like “Are McDonald’s Hotcakes Made Fresh Every Day” and “How Mike Tindall Became The Brother Prince William Needs,” the service began pushing sponsored stories at me with the urgency of an Instagram feed. It was a very strange feeling to realize my phone seemed to have utterly forgotten who I was.
I will not forsake you. But I might not call as often as I used to.
I don’t often write about personal things here, but the two most-read posts of this past year were Mastering The Rudiments, about my journey with learning the drums, and Unretirement, a personal reflection on my career.
I wrote both of those back in May – a shoulder month between seasons. In May, the year hasn’t hardened into disappointment or routine, there’s still time to change course. Now that the year has passed, I’ve found myself wanting to Think Out Loud a bit, in particular about a goal I set for myself this year. In “Unretirement” I explained that after seven companies, I had decided to get off the startup train for good: “As any founder can tell you, being in charge of millions of dollars of invested capital and scores of trusting employees is exhausting.” What I didn’t mention was that I promised myself I’d not commit to anything full time – no new startup, to be sure, but also, no project of any kind that would dominate my time and warp reality in its wake. My goal was to simply…be.
For those of you born after Seinfeld went off the air, “prime time” dominated an era when television viewers only had three or four choices at any given time. Before streaming took over our devices, before cable devolved to 500 channels with nothing to see, there was “prime time television.” If you’re old enough to remember when Friends ruled “Must-See TV,” you (and tens of millions of others) likely spent a fair amount of your weeknights engaged with prime time’s three-hour post-dinner programming block.
The Dude knows the pitfalls of scattering a loved ones’ ashes…
Every so often I get an idea for a new website or service. I imagine you do as well. Thinking about new ideas is exciting – all that promise and potential. Some of my favorite conversations open with “Wouldn’t it be cool if….”
Most of my ideas start as digital services that take advantage of the internet’s ubiquity. It’s rare I imagine something bounded in real space – a new restaurant or a retail store. I’m an internet guy, and even after decades of enshittification, I still think the internet is less than one percent developed. But a recent thought experiment made me question that assumption. As I worked through a recent “wouldn’t it be cool” moment, I realized just how moribund the internet ecosystem has become, and how deadening it is toward spontaneous experimentation.
