Digital Native

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity and vice versa. If you haven’t subscribed, join 50,000 weekly readers by subscribing here: For 2001’s Monsters, Inc., Pixar faced the challenge of animating fur. The character Sully, for instance, has nearly three million hairs on his body. Animating each individual strand would be impossible, so Pixar animators instead created a program called Fizt that could simulate the movement of Sully’s hairs.

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa. If you haven’t subscribed, join 50,000 weekly readers by subscribing here: Hey Everyone 👋 , Apologies for missing last week—after three years of dodging COVID, it finally caught me. This week’s piece is built around a statistic I read recently: an expert estimated that by 2025 to 2030, 99% to 99.9% of the internet’s content will be AI-generated. Let’s unpack what that means and what the ripple effects might be.

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa. If you haven’t subscribed, join 45,000 weekly readers by subscribing here: If I had to crown one company the king of TikTok, I’d go with Duolingo. No corporate account is savvier at tapping into the zeitgeist or more reliable at going viral. Since relaunching its TikTok channel in September 2021, Duolingo’s account has swelled to 6.6M followers—more than iconic brands like Disney (4.1M), Apple (2.8M), and Nike (4.3M).

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa—always through a lens of optimism. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: Hey Everyone 👋 , Over the past two weeks, I wrote a two-part “State of the Union” on AI’s budding application layer. Here, I’m combining Part I and Part II into a single deep-dive. Things are moving fast. Predictions and market maps from January seem quaint.

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa—always through a lens of optimism. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: The pace of technological advancement is staggering. I’ve always liked this visualization: 5 megabytes in 1956 vs. 1 terabyte today. For context, 1 terabyte = 1,000,000 megabytes. A terabyte hard drive in 1956 would’ve been the size of a 40-story building; today, it fits on your fingertip.

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa—always through a lens of optimism. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: We’re a quarter of the way into 2023. I’ve put out 15 Digital Native pieces so far—in case you missed any, here are the five most-popular pieces of the year so far: This piece examines 10 forces shaping modern commerce—from livestream shopping to TikTok, celebrity brands to CAC headwinds.

Weekly writing about how technology shapes humanity, and vice versa—always through a lens of optimism. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: To kick off 2023, I wrote a deep-dive into AI and its budding application layer. Three months later, a lot has changed. Predictions and market maps from January seem quaint; things are progressing much faster than most people anticipated.

Weekly writing exploring how technology and humanity collide. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000+ weekly readers by subscribing here: All humans have needs, and every company seeks to fulfill a need. Needs can vary greatly. Some companies exist to put food on our tables, our most basic human need. Costco and Kroger come to mind.

Weekly writing exploring how technology and humanity collide. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000 weekly readers by subscribing here: Hey Everyone 👋 , This past week has been exhausting for many in the tech world. Though the startup ecosystem (and broader economy) avoided the worst case scenario, it came at the cost of many sleepless nights and frayed nerves. As a result, I wanted to make this week’s piece somewhat more light-hearted, an escape from the somberness.

Weekly writing exploring how technology and humanity collide. If you haven’t subscribed, join 40,000 weekly readers by subscribing here: Last fall, I shared 10 charts that I found interesting and emblematic of broader themes. The 10 charts covered a wide array of topics, leaping from homeownership to digital media, climate change to job growth. A week later, I shared 10 more from my colleagues at Index—charts about generative AI, about healthcare, about remote work.