12 2026 February
The Best and Worst of Super Bowl Advertising
Earlier this week I published my usual annual recap of the best and worst ads from the Super Bowl. In the days after I wrote that piece,...
Read Now29 2026 January
The AI Land “Gold Rush” Is Here, But There’s a Missing Story
At multiple points this week, I came across different stories and conversations about the same thing: the so-called “gold rush” of land grabbing and real estate...
Read Now28 2026 January
How Technology is Rethinking Songs and Musical Instruments
Yesterday Eleven Labs announced a collaboration with Grammy award winning artists like Liza Minnelli and Art Garfunkel to use their AI tools to compose and perform all-new...
Read Now15 2026 January
5 Non-Obvious Takeaways from the World’s Largest Tech Show
I spent several days touring the trade show floor talking with tech experts, trying out demos, encountering lots of weird robots and interviewing people about their visions...
Read Now06 2026 January
People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on ‘Drugs’
If AI models are trained on human language and behavior, could they be similarly affected by psychedelics or other drugs? That’s the question that led...
Read Now02 2026 January
The Data on Driverless Cars Says They Reduce Crashes, So What’s Missing?
Recently, a compelling article that came out, written by a trauma surgeon who has had to deal with the aftermath of bodies shattered from car...
Read Now30 2025 December
The Quantified Uselessness of the AI-Generated Year in Review
There’s a special kind of uselessness amplified by AI that’s probably surrounding you right now: the year in review. The idea wasn’t a bad one....
Read Now10 2025 December
The AI Data War in Retail Is Just Getting Started. Lessons from Black Friday …
The last two weeks were the biggest sales week for many online retailers as the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals all took over. I...
Read Now08 2025 December
How the Breakers Might Make Everything Better … Just After They Destroy It
Back in the year 2000, I remember driving to a client meeting on the streets of Sydney and sitting in the car outside their office...
Read Now02 2025 December
The 2025 Non-Obvious Holiday Gift Guide
Today we continue with my annual Non-Obvious Holiday Gift Guide, featuring a few products that caught my eye throughout the past year. 3. The U.S....
Read Now26 2025 November
Why Young People Have Nostalgia for a Time Before They Were Born
Here’s an oxymoron for you: people are using AI generated images to evoke the nostalgia of the 90s—the last human decade without ubiquitous technology. This idea...
Read Now24 2025 November
How AI Is Helping Reduce Accents, But Could Do Much More
Thanks to AI there are a number of new services that are designed to help language learners learn a new dialect and reduce their accents...
Read Now18 2025 November
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu
Tim Wu is exactly the voice that we need right now to help imagine what the positive version of our technological future could be. Known...
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