Columns: The Center explores key issues and emerging trends in the digital realm
The Center’s leadership, fellows, and guest writers expand on the findings from the Digital Future studies with commentaries that illuminate the evolving challenges and opportunities for individuals, communities, corporations, governments, and NGOs.
____________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Cole, Ph.D., founder and director
Brad Berens, Ph.D., strategic advisor
More voices from the center
____________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Cole, Ph.D., founder and director
2024
- The survival of the union (November 6)
- Trust in online information: a steady decline (October 16)
- Why I hate the iPad (October 2)
- Nobody Knows Anything: Hollywood learns and then unlearns the same old lessons in deciding what films to make (September 18)
- Disney’s belated dividend from its 2019 Fox acquisition (September 4)
- Moving from barely known to President of the United States: can it be done in 74 to 100 days? (July 9)
- Three great institutions set themselves on fire with self-infliced wounds (June 17)
- Losing more than just weight (June 5)
- When we lose weight, who gains? (May 22)
- Disruption comes to our bodies — and beyond (May 8)
- I work at a McDonalds but don’t get paid! (April 17)
- AI has begun with fear (March 20)
- Why sports are the biggest game in media (March 6)
- Does the Internet make the world a better place? (February 21)
- When good evidence comes from bad people (February 7)
- 2023 was the Year of AI; what will 2024 bring? (January 24)
2023
- The winners coming out of COVID: where are they now? (December 6)
- COVID winners, revisited two years later (November 20)
- Two years later: COVID’s big losers revisited (November 8)
- The changing economics of consumer spending on technology and entertainment (October 25)
- Lessons from last summer’s movie hits and bombs (October 11)
- What looks like “same old same old” is anything but (September 27)
- This year’s movies are longer than ever (July 19)
- How long is too long for a movie? (July 12)
- The end of broadcast TV (May 9)
- Movie theaters are back! (April 19)
- What Sam Altman is about to face (March 22)
- Reckless disregard for the truth is not protected under the First Amendment (February 28)
- Why the Super Bowl still matters…and the Oscars no longer do (February 15)
- Google’s turn in the cross-hairs: when disrupters get disrupted (February 1)
2022
- Who can win the next cable news war? (November 30)
- The ground under the 24/7 news channels is shifting like never before (November 16)
- Even death gets disrupted (November 2)
- Question: What does Tim Cook want Apple TV+ to be? (October 12)
- Is civil war on the horizon? How bad could it get? (September 21)
- A national mental health crisis (August 3)
- Returning to work: the war that is coming (July 20)
- Learning, shopping, communities, travel, and entertainment: coming out of COVID, which changes were temporary and which are permanent? (July 6)
- See no evil. Except when we need to. (June 22)
- Will advertising make streaming look like broadcast television? (June 8)
- “Well, what are you going to do NOW?” (May 25)
- What Netflix must do to survive (May 4)
- The slap heard round the world — except on ABC? (April 19)
- “The Great Resignation” — it’s not about jobs, it’s about mental health (April 6)
- More COVID winners (March 23)
- COVID’s big winners (March 9)
- COVID’s big losers (February 23)
- Whoopi Goldberg goes to “Reflection Camp” for airing her views on The View (February 9)
2021
- Elon Musk’s Tesla: does any other automobile company matter anymore? (November 3)
- The two kinds of workers after COVID (October 13)
- Movie theaters after COVID — Part 3: Movie theaters are not going anywhere (September 30)
- Movie theaters after COVID — Part 2: A summer of experimentation (September 29)
- Movie theaters after COVID — Part 1: What happened and will there be anything left? (September 28)
- It started with computers and then moved to mobile devices: does Apple have a third act? (July 7)
- Why won’t you be my neighbor? (June 16)
- Phone companies and entertainment don’t mix (June 2)
- The post-COVID paradox (May 19)
- Movies, concerts, sports, theme parks: which in-person events will survive? (May 5)
- The most powerful company in the world? How big can Amazon get? (April 21)
- Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew: do no harm (unless it is good for ratings) (April 7)
- Business travel will never be the same. (March 24)
- Then there was one: With Paramount’s entry into streaming, only one studio is sitting on the sidelines. (March 10)
- Battleground Australia: Mark Zuckerberg vs Rupert Murdoch. Facebook blinks for now. (February 24)
- Twitter shutting down Trump and Smartmatic suing Fox News: It’s about time or a dangerous precedent? (February 10)
- That didn’t last long: Fox News is back — to its old ways (February 2)
- The Roaring 2020s (January 13)
2020
- Home (and nowhere else) for the holidays! (December 8)
- Warner Media blinks: the plan for Wonder Woman 1984 (November 24)
- A warm welcome back: media gatekeepers (November 4)
- HBO Max: The “New Coke” of 2020? (October 21)
- Can the tech companies continue to grow? Case study: Amazon (October 7)
- Googling, Ubering and Xeroxing: How Zooming became a verb in six months (September 23)
- It’s a Wonderful Internet: What if the Internet had never been born? (July 21)
- The billion-dollar movie: R.I.P. (July 1)
- Starting college in your parents’ basement (June 17)
- The psychological impact of the events of 2020: effects that may last for a very long time (June 2)
- Going to work: a commute of ten miles or ten feet? (May 13)
- Has the coronavirus killed movie theaters? (April 22)
- Quibi: the best laid plans meet the Coronavirus (April 6)
- Welcome to The Coronavirus Zone (April 1)
- Disney’s self-disruption success saga (March 4)
- Disruption comes to health care (February 19)
- Netflix launches a major offensive in the Streaming Wars (February 4)
2019
- Entertainment: disruption in full force (December 20)
- An epidemic of loneliness? (December 4)
- “OK Boomer” — the opening shot in the generational war (November 20)
- Why NBC Universal’s Peacock will be “must-stream TV” (November 6)
- Television sets: a 1940s device reimagined for the 2020s (October 16)
- The ghost of television past (October 2)
- Microsoft: back from the brink (September 18)
- Would breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google be bad for consumers? (July 24)
- The disruption of Netflix: a plan for its survival (July 10)
- Hulu moves to “the happiest place on Earth” (June 16)
- Streaming Wars begin: how Disney beats Apple — and perhaps a surprise ending? (June 5)
- Foreign disinformation: the plot to kill 5G (May 22)
- America’s cashless future (May 8)
- Why HBO doesn’t want you to watch the end of the Game of Thrones (April 24)
- Why 5G is a really big deal (April 10)
- Parenting in the Digital Age: new rules for safety (March 27)
- Buyer’s remorse? AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner (March 13)
- A tale of two reports: Mueller and Starr (February 25)
- The coming war against technology (February 13)
- Will the Oscar go to Black Panther? (January 30)
- Facebook — the way back: four steps to salvation (January 17)
2018
- Facebook’s arrogance and amorality (December 11)
- Can Facebook survive? (November 28)
- Die, Netflix, die: how the studios are planning to starve the streaming giant (November 7)
- Will anyone have a job in the digital future? (October 24)
- Electric cars have passed the tipping point (October 10)
- How MoviePass won the war but lost the company (August 15)
- Leave HBO alone (August 1)
- The secret meeting that never happened (July 18)
- “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper” (July 2)
- Now that AT&T has acquired Time Warner, what should its biggest rival do? (June 18)
- Why did Amazon build a studio rather than buy one? (June 6)
- The great deal of digital media (May 23)
- De-cluttering: the real digital revolution (May 9)
- Why you need a friend when you turn 50 (April 25)
- Why Amazon Go means the end of traditional retail (April 11)
- Uber’s accident won’t stop driverless cars for long (March 28)
- Two guys in a garage: where will the next disruptive company come from? (March 21)
- Five years later: the prediction on the end of printed newspapers (March 7)
- A 2005 prediction 13 years later: teenagers and social networks (February 21)
- Cinematic staring contest: MoviePass vs. movie theaters (February 7)
- As the movie studios consolidate, which one is next? (January 25)
- Subscription models move to the movie theater (January 11, 2018)
2017
- How regulation is used to stifle competition (December 7, 2017)
- E-nuff Already! (November 17)
- Will banks do anything about the disruption coming their way? (November 2)
- The battle for the consumer’s wallet (October 19)
- What really happened to this summer’s box office (October 4)
- “Incremental” is not what Apple fans were waiting for (September 13)
- Implantables and the war between convenience and privacy (August 31)
- Apple’s future hangs in the balance (August 17)
- How driverless cars change everything (August 3)
- Amazon, sports, and the future of the broadcast networks (July 13, 2017)
__________________________________________________
Brad Berens, Ph.D., Center strategic advisor
2024
- Can you only GenAI your way to the middle? (November 27)
- Retro futures: War Games (October 23)
- Emotional truths that aren’t true (October 18)
- My Ozempic journey: packing up (September 19)
- The digital Cyrano (Sepember 10)
- Musk’s latest antics (August 21)
- New cracks in reality (August 7)
- Will Ozempic kill movie theaters? (July 24)
- Who are we? (July 17)
- We need new AI analogies (June 26)
- Chatting with Chat (June 12)
- 13 ways of looking at brands (May 29)
- Democratizing digital deception (May 24)
- The ghosts of what wasn’t (May 10)
- Who am I this time? (May 1)
- Cheating at Wordle (April 24)
- What is real? (April 19)
- No, Musk’s behavior isn’t hurting Tesla (April 10)
- Time travel — analog and digital (April 3)
- The end of filter failure? (March 27)
- Wendy’s, Google, and Instagram (March 8)
- A Breakfast at Tiffany’s Happy Meal? (February 28)
- Walmart, Vizio, Amazon, and Experience Stacks (February 23)
- Retro Futures: Wag the Dog and Deep Fakes (February 16)
- Experience Stacks and Matthew Perry (RIP) (February 9)
- TV is doing just fine. . .for now (January 25)
- 20 years of innovation! (January 17)
- What’s so great about Steamboat Willie? (January 10)
2023
- Is David Zaslav the new Beeper King? (December 28)
- Dueling intelligences (December 20)
- Elon’s just zis guy, y’know? (December 8)
- Let’s stop calling it “social” media (November 29)
- Truth in a filtered world (November 22)
- Tribal shopping (November 9)
- What will an AI hardware device look like? (October 27)
- AI and the productivity lie (October 18)
- Analog power-ups and relationship half lives (October 13)
- Amazon, AI, and ads on Prime Video (October 4)
- Death is analog (September 29)
- Batman, business, and the incomparable (August 30)
- What’s next for Apple and Amazon? (August 23)
- The Hollywood strikes, AI, strategy, and overfocusing (August 9)
- The real social media (August 2)
- Digital Transformation: Three Stories (July 26)
- Keyword: Overfocusing (July 21)
- The monster in my ear (July 14)
- AI, SCOTUS, and Affirmative Action (July 7)
- Apple Vision Pro: What will it take to go big? (June 29)
- A recipe for digital transformation (May 31)
- Keyword: persuasion (May 24)
- Generative AI, misinformation, and the Plausibility Loophole (May 12)
- Eventness (April 26)
- Musk, Twitter, NPR (April 21)
- Why you should read “Chokepoint Capitalism” (April 12)
- Adventures in self-disruption (April 5)
- Attention is not a currency (March 24)
- The start of the English major (March 15)
- Would anyone under 30 watch “Picard?” (March 8)
- Retro Futures: AI and Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (March 3)
- Microsoft’s new A.I.-powered Bing and Shakespeare (February 22)
- Why people believe conspiracy theories (February 8)
- Retro Futures: “Looker” (1981), looking back, looking forward (February 3)
- Why Amazon blew it killing “Smile” (January 25)
- Artisanal crap (January 19)
- CES, paradigm shifts, spandrels, and collateral damage (January 11)
- My 2023 prediction. . .or prayer (January 4)
2022
- What happens when companies become partisan? (December 22)
- Scarier than Skynet: AI and persuasion (December 14)
- Experience stacks, competitive advantage, and Neflix’s “Wednesday” (December 7)
- The frontiers of scale (December 2)
- A new scam: The “Middle of the Night” call (November 23)
- On strategy: the power of WITDO (November 18)
- The end of cheap scale? (November 9)
- Musk & Twitter: Can we all please calm TF down? (November 4)
- Social media and the banality of evil (October 25)
- Industry revolution by meteor strike (October 19)
- Why Musk is stalling (October 14)
- Mediapocalypse 2025 (October 5)
- When A.I.’s compete with human artists (September 30)
- Frontiers of live experience (September 23)
- Experience Stacks and physical objects (September 16)
- The limits of “prebunking” in the fight against misinformation (September 14)
- Surveillance capitalism bedtime stories… (September 7)
- The New York Times’ moral lapse (August 24)
- Why Walmart should buy Paramount (August 17)
- Experience Stacks, movie stars, and the problem with Facebook (August 10)
- Experience Stacks: Top Gun, Star Trek, Spider-Man (August 5)
- Why it’s so hard to think (July 30)
- What Twitter should do next (after Musk) (July 13)
- The world in April 2023 (July 8)
- NFTs, 5G, HUD: Colliding trends and the intermediate future (June 29)
- Analog lives in a digital world (June 24)
- What Fox News should have said (June 15)
- A simple test for what counts as “The Metaverse” (June 10)
- Trust is analog (June 1)
- The Web3/Creator paradox (May 27)
- The fragile glory of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” plus…Why Apple is the right acquirer of Twitter (May 18)
- “Change Your Life” productivity apps & how to use them (May 11)
- Elon Musk still doesn’t want Twitter (May 6)
- Amazon’s new pay-with-your-palm tech and its implications (April 27)
- Musk, Trump, Twitter, and New Media Math (April 22)
- Apple, Alaska Airlines, Taco Bell, & Sweetgreen: the trouble with subscriptions (April 14)
- How risk is changing (March 31)
- Why Amazon will buy Starbucks (March 16)
- Why Facebook is creepier than Google (March 3)
- Overfocusing and immersion (February 17)
- Secret Stories: Microsoft, Activision, Spotify, Joe Rogan, Neil Young, Facebook (February 2)
2021
2020
- Technologies of grief (May 27)
- Who will create the best streaming video experience (January 22)
2019
- Will Twitter decide the 2020 presidential election? (October 30)
- Should you look at your kid’s smartphone? Digital parenting tips continue (October 23)
- Have this talk before your kid gets a phone: digital parenting tips #1 (October 9)
- This is the kinder, gentler Uber? (September 13)
- Why Amazon made “The Boys” (July 31)
- Am I B.L.U.E (Bored, Lonely, Uncomfortable…Ever) (July 16)
- The challenge of deepfakes (June 12)
- A better streaming model (May 29)
- When businesses ask the wrong question (May 15)
- Netflix’s only hope is to advertise (May 2)
- Ride-hailing’s “iPod moment” (April 17)
- Ho hum, Apple’s boring choices with TV+ (April 3)
- Why Amazon’s house brands will win big (March 20)
- Why Google should buy eBay: digital assistant wars (March 6)
- Why direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies fail (February 20)
- No algorithm for serendipity (February 6)
- Analog pleasures in a digital world (January 23)
- The Flip (January 9, 2019)
2018
- Nonprofits are the real threat to Uber and Lyft (December 5)
- All the news that’s fit to ignore (November 14)
- 2023: why Comcast should worry (October 31)
- Can self-driving cars save local businesses? (October 17)
- Beware the “Words with Friends” Scammers” (September 26)
- Amazon’s real reason for launching “Free Dive” isn’t about ad revenue (September 12)
- Paging Dr. Alexa (August 22)
- Why the NRA should worry about “ghost guns” (August 8)
- Streaming superheros and the DC Universe (July 25)
- What is a movie and why does it matter? (July 11)
- The half-life of brands: Amazon’s algorithmic strategy (June 27)
- Will Oculus Go kill the TV set? (June 13)
- The future that is already here (May 30)
- The challenge of OOOIO: opting out of information overload (May 16)
- Marvel’s new “Avengers: Infinity War” movie and the structure of special experiences (May 2)
- Why it’s easy to label things as “fake news” (April 17)
- Apple and original TV: a strategy teardown (April 4, 2018)
- The not-caring economy (March 14)
- It’s not information overload: it’s information hoarding (February 28)
- Retro futures and how they can help us to see what’s next (February 14)
- It’s about so much more than health care (February 1)
- Facebook needs a Surgeon General’s warning (January 18)
- Why using cash won’t protect your privacy (January 4, 2018)
2017
- Death Star Scenario: Amazon Prime Bank (December 14, 2017)
- Adapt-amnesia, and why it matters (November 30)
- Ready, AIM, Fired… (November 9)
- Email: a modest proposal (October 26)
- What comes after smartphones? (October 12)
- Is your next car an Apple sedan? (September 28)
- Why Amazon should buy Warby Parker (September 21)
- Car ownership is changing, not dying — yet (September 7)
- Disney & Netflix & Amazon…oh my! (August 24)
- Liquid Behavior (August 10)
- Smartphones and drained brains (July 27)
- The fall and rise of the visual internet (July 20, 2017)
___________________________________________________________
More voices from the Center
Madeline Albright and Marc Nathanson
- Opinion: Trump has pulled out of the global battle for hearts and minds (August 13, 2020)
__________
Ruozhu Zhao, visiting scholar, Communication University of China
- Will artificial intelligence replace human news anchors on television? In China, it is already happening
(July 18, 2020)
__________
Maxwell Votey, guest columnist
__________
Xin Song, guest scholar
- How did Korean K-Pop group BTS beat Trump on Twitter?
(September 4, 2019)
__________
Kumar Mehta, senior fellow
- Seven steps: how to build a sustained environment for innovation
(January 30, 2019) - How to bet on the right ideas (January 17, 2019)
__________
Jian Wang, guest scholar
- Why hasn’t mobile payment taken off in the United States?
(May 15, 2018)
__________
Bruce Ramer, Center Board of Governors
- The future ain’t what it used to be (February 27, 2018)
__________
Susanne Chan, guest scholar
- Cybersecurity under Xi Jinping: a new model for broad control in China
(January 15, 2018)
__________
Analysis by the Center staff
- The political reality of the internet in China (October 11, 2017)
__________
Harlan Lebo, senior fellow
- Are internet non-users a volunteer underclass? (September 6, 2017)
__________
Michael Suman, research director
- How much privacy should we expect? (July 26, 2017)
__________
To learn how the Center provides global companies and NGOs with perspective and guidance to keep ahead of the trends, contact the Center at [email protected], or (310) 235-4444.