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Do We Want A Society Built On The Architecture of Dumb Terminals?
God, “innovation.” First banalized by undereducated entrepreneurs in the oughts, then ground to pablum by corporate grammarians over the past decade, “innovation” – at least when applied to business –...
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My Senate Testimony
(image) Today I had a chance to testify to the US Senate on the subject of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and data privacy. It was an honor, and a bit scary, but overall an experience I’ll never...
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The Tragedy of the Data Commons
Before, and after? A theme of my writing over the past ten or so years has been the role of data in society. I tend to frame that role anthropologically: How have we adapted to this new element in our...
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Instead of Breaking Up The Tech Oligarchs, Let’s Try This One Simple Hack
(image) Social conversations about difficult and complex topics have arcs – they tend to start scattered, with many threads and potential paths, then resolve over time toward consensus. This consensus...
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After the Token Act: A New Data Economy Driven By Small Business...
Gramercy Tavern in New York City If Walmart can leverage data tokens to lure Amazon’s best customers away, what else is possible in a world of enabled by my fictional Token Act? Well, Walmart vs....
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Lazy Ad Buying Is Killing The Open Web.
But…I just *bought* a robe. I don’t want another one. If you’re read my rants for long enough, you know I’m fond of programmatic advertising. I’ve called it the most important artifact in human...
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Predictions 2019: Stay Stoney, My Friends.
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...
View ArticleOur Data Governance Is Broken. Let’s Reinvent It.
This is an edited version of a series of talks I first gave in New York over the past week, outlining my work at Columbia. Many thanks to Reinvent, Pete Leyden, Cap Gemini, Columbia University,...
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With Privacy as Its Shield, Facebook Hopes To Conquer the Entire Internet.
Never mind that man behind the privacy curtain. I’ll never forget a meal I had with a senior executive at Facebook many years ago, back when I was just starting to question the motives of the...
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Mapping Data Flows: Help Us Ask the Right Questions
I’ve been quiet here on Searchblog these past few months, not because I’ve nothing to say, but because two major projects have consumed my time. The first, a media platform in development, is still...
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Predictions 2020: Facebook Caves, Google Zags, Netflix Sells Out, and Data...
A new year brings another run at my annual predictions: For 17 years now, I’ve taken a few hours to imagine what might happen over the course of the coming twelve months. And my goodness did I swing...
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New Research Shows Why and How Zoom Could Become an Advertising Driven Business
Zoom’s stock: Up and down and up and down and up and to the right. As the coronavirus crisis built to pandemic levels in early March, a relatively unknown tech company confronted a defining...
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Zoom Is YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp – All in Two Months.
If you’ve read Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism, you likely agree that the most important asset for a data-driven advertising platform is consumer engagement. That engagement throws off data,...
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Well That Was A Year: A Review of My 2020 Predictions
From the Department of Didn’t See THAT Coming… Yes, it’s true: Last year, I did not predict a global pandemic in 2020. COVID is a gravitational force that warps everything it touches, so I approach...
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Why I’m Still Worried About TikTok
(image credit) News came last week that TikTok eclipsed both Google and Facebook as the most visited domain and most downloaded app in the United States. The mainstream media response can be summed up...
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On AI: What Should We Regulate?
EU classification of AI risk. I’ve been following the story of generative AI a bit too obsessively over the past nine months, and while the story’s cooled a bit, I don’t think it any less important. If...
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Predictions 2024: It’s All About The Data
Let’s talk 2024. 2023 was a down year on the predictions front, but at least I’ve learned to sidestep distractions like Trump, crypto, and Musk. If I can avoid talking about the joys of the upcoming...
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