A Pessimistic View
I’ve been too focused on the job of moderator. It’s gotten to the point where viewers of the show are calling me a bully. Just because I feel bullied by some of the behavior on the show does not absolve me of the consequences of that judgement. Just because I’ve suffered as we all have from the onslaught of the Trump years does not excuse my inability to get my attitude at least in line with the attitude that I’m not in charge. People have the right to their opinions no matter how wrong they turn out to be. Just because I’m looking to further social conversation does not mean it really works. I’ve tried apologizing but my grade on both sides is D+. Those who feel abused by my insistence on trying to persist dynamic conversation include me: I don’t like it when I fail as a moderator.
So what do I do about it? I can walk away. Try it some time. One of the hardest things for me as I get older, and 75 is seriously older, is realizing that the bullying tone, no matter how rhythmically delivered, is still a loser. Just because I’ve heard the same stuff over and over again week after week, just because it’s stuck in the endless case of why are you guys talking about this when nobody cares what you think, and anyway I thought this show was about computers, if it is broke than fix it. This show has been going since 2004 or so, so 20 years. Did it ever work? Sometimes I think that the main reason people watch, or listen, is as background music while they wait for something to happen. I have a friend who watches for that reason. The bad news is he doesn’t have time recently. As a producer I think perhaps the show is oversaturated, that we should do less rather than more. That fits in with doing less while waiting for ambient space in which to bubble up some actionable ideas, but if that happens only as counterpoint to trolling the conversation….
Another reason we do the show too much is that we want to do it in a weekly pattern. It apparently bolsters the credibility of our expertise, which in this case is why we self-produce, don’t get paid, and are engaged only by the possibility of the random occasions when the format works. As a moderator, I spend a lot of my time load-balancing, interupting individual motivations by trying to encourage the group mind. That may not be working well enough to justify, if not the current show, the motivation to do the next one. And I rationalize the conundrum by insisting the mainstream media is doing an equally pathetic job of trying to stay in business.
A (Slightly) Less Pessimistic View
I am starting to believe none of the court cases Donald Trump is involved with will come to a verdict before the voters vote. The structural standoff in the legislative branch may produce the only closure in the offing. If it doesn’t, we will be in for a difficult struggle. But how bad will that really be? Biden may be too old to be re-elected, as Denis posited on this episode. Much as the media talks about Trump’s solid base, there’s just as hard-coded a consensus among the rest of the electorate to never vote for Trump. Whether Trump wins his nomination seems a done deal; whether Biden withdraws would likely make the Republican the next president. My bet is that won’t happen.
What might can be signaled by what happened with Open AI and Sam Altman’s job. After a maelstrom of firing, board overreach, and bigCo sledgehammer tactics, everything returned to whatever this new normal is. Microsoft seems in a strong position, at least relative to having lost their platform in the rise of mobile. Big tech was dealt a similar blow with Apple’s ATT advertising coup, but at year’s end advertising seems to have recovered at least with Google, Meta, and Amazon. Subscriptions seem to be dominating digital publishing plays like the New York Times, giving rise to a bundled churn between text, TV, and the transition to streaming. Apple is rebooting their hardware platforms around a new architecture, moving the puck away from the phone and toward virtual collaboration. Also threatened by the new hardware is the Web economy, replaced by re-bundling and services growth.
The architecture of the newsletter is the center of creative expansion. Substack may focus too much on subscriptions and not enough for the strategic tools of its app and Web hybrid, but the handwriting is already on the wall. Email and notifications are becoming a single communications and metadata path. When the new interactive transcript tools cross over into the app and produce a hybrid navigation experience, the text and video objects will become the fundamental gestures of a post-Web subscription value proposition.
The Vision Pro is already a way of orchestrating this hybrid experience. Decorating the electric car with cameras and audio is well under way; server-based pods extend the range of the collaborative network as cars link up in a mesh grid. Generative servers use signals from proximity data to synthesize multiple rendering of objects in a new Apple maps service. Airplay takes on a whole new meaning.
Regardless of whether Trump/Biden is the election, the political power will reside in the hybrid collaborative app. Musk’s Xapp may or may not transpire, but the rebooted news media on that network will fuel fundraising. Political action committees will bundle Vision Pros or cooperative apps as hardware dongles into the mix. Civilians will subscribe to news networks on the new platform, paying off the hardware with in-app purchases and bundled streaming sites. Even if Trump is successful as the candidate, the real power will reside in the subscription network and its thought leaders. The opportunity for a new third party centrist candidate could reside in the post-convention virtual network.
Point Counterpoint