I am a recovering Twitter junkie. I used to be addicted to the social media network—that is addicted to reading others’ tweets as opposed to tweeting myself. When I first joined Twitter in 2009 I would only read my timeline. I didn’t tweet anything myself until much later. At first I only followed a couple dozen people, but over time the number of people I followed grew and grew. I don’t know if it was some kind of obsessive compulsive trait of mine, but I felt a need to read every tweet in my timeline. When I woke up in the morning I’d scroll back through all the tweets I missed the previous night. Such a practice was manageable then because I wasn’t following too many people (in the dozens), and those I followed didn’t tweet too often.
Continue readingTag Archives: algorithims
Social Media is the New Word of Mouth
The best form of advertising is word of mouth, and the new word of mouth is social media. The aim of social media companies is to make their users spend more time on their platforms in order to generate more ad revenue. The more time people spend online, the less time they spend with other people in person, which means less time for physical “word of mouth” interactions. Today, people have more interactions with other people on the internet than in real life, making social media the new “word of mouth”. (This was true before the Covid-19 pandemic which only compounded this effect further.)
Continue readingThe Self-Driving Car Conundrum

Self-driving cars are inevitable. Tesla, Ford, BMW, Nissan, GM, Google, Baidu, Apple, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, and many more companies are all working on developing autonomous driving systems for their vehicles. It is not a matter of if, but when. Self-driving automobiles will be ubiquitous in the future. There is one core conundrum with self-driving cars, however. Self-driving cars will only work if there are only self-driving cars.
Continue readingSelf-Producing Movies with AI in the Future

The future of movies will be the present of books. Filmmaking will become like self-publishing today in the sense that anybody can easily do it entirely by themselves.
Continue readingRecommendation Algorithms Rule Your Life
Cultural critics used to be essential curators of music, movies, books, and art. When there were only a couple of newspapers or radio stations or TV stations, the select few professional critics had enormous power in telling the public which art they should pay attention to. Then came the internet and everything changed. With blogs, message boards, and podcasts, anybody could become a critic. Both the creation and critique of art became more democratic. Traditional critics became less important. People preferred to take recommendations from like-minded people in their specific cultural niche. This gave real cultural power to bloggers and amateur critics on the internet who developed a following. Continue reading
MoviePass and the Netflix Business Model
I’ve always loved watching movies, especially in the theater. There’s nothing like seeing a film on the big screen with a full surround-sound system. It’s an experience you can’t quite reproduce at home. But I never went to see movies in the theater as much as I would’ve liked to because it was too expensive. In New York and Los Angeles, it’s $15+ for a ticket—and don’t even get me started on the food and drink prices. So last year, when MoviePass lowered their service to $9.99 a month, I immediately signed up. With it, you can see one movie every day, potentially thirty movies a month, all for $9.99—less than the price of one ticket. It was a no-brainer for someone like me. Continue reading
Data: The New Most Valuable Resource
With the recent Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal there’s been a lot of concern over, not just Facebook, but all tech companies and the massive amount of personal data they collect from their users. Most people don’t realize how much personal data they willingly relinquish to tech companies in exchange for their services. Nor do people realize just how valuable their personal data is. Continue reading