The Next Thing

A semi-regular newsletter on media, technology, and marketing, published fortnightly since 2010. (on hold for a bit)

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Writing

2026

• The Toolmaker Era

2025

• Creativity, World Models and the Old Brain
• Inside Out AI
• The Takeoff and Landing Problem (or... why the AI revolution is copy and paste)

2023

• You are not late to the AI party

2018

• How much you’re worth to an advertiser
• Final thoughts on Facebook (hopefully)
• The Next Tobacco

2017

• 18 Things, Part 3
• 18 Things, Part 2
• 18 Things, Part 1
• Making Choices That Maximise Optionality

2016

• We Need to Talk About the Black Boxes
• Building a blockchain-powered Twitter tip-bot for WPP's Stream unconference

2015

• Can Technology Companies Create Content?
• When your competitors don't care
• Where We'll Die
• The New Operating Systems
• The AI opportunity is actually in Intelligence Augmentation
• The Sky is Not Falling
• Schumpeterian Rubble

2014

• The Evolving Brand Types Of 2020
• I’m not betting on Twitter’s ad model
• Four Paths for the Press
• The problem with the long-term viability of clickbait

2013

• Political bias in digital media – findings from The Election Worm
• We Need Better Filters
• How biased are Australian publishers during the election?
• Band-Aids on bulletwounds – the problem with paywalls (and one simple solution)
• The human bandwidth for advertising is disappearing
• What’s your personal data worth?
• Chasing Big Data Unicorns
• Enough with the ‘Innovation’

2012

• Creativity
• Rewiring the World
• The beginning of chair piracy
• Do paywalls have to work for journalism to survive?

2011

• The impending (but slow) death of the banner ad
• Less architects, more gardeners
• Enough with ugly squares
• 8 things about IPTV
• Do we need to reinvent mobile?
• Culture vs. The Googlebots
• Why the Fairfax iPad app was a waste of time

2010

• Publishers, innovation, and failure
• Why Twitter’s Titanium matters
• Be abundant. Be yourself
• What’s wrong (and right) with Guvera?

2009

• Plausible promises and the critical mass
• Information vs. Knowledge
• Pigeons, Magic, and Invisible Forces
• Dark blue swans
• Social media has a branding problem

2008

• Trans-Experiential Ideas
• Communication in an invisible world
• Channel-less advertising
• The Evolution of Mobile
• Why aren’t we creating great digital work?

2007

• What’s so hard about Digital Media?
• Are we crossing the Digital Rubicon?
• A brief rant on the Music Industry
• Advertising as a Service