-
An organic Internet made out of snails

Frenchman Jules Allix, in the mid-nineteenth century, popularized a kind of organic Internet made out of snails. Drawing upon the physician Franz Mesmer’s theory of “animal magnetism,” which postulated the existence of a universal magnetic force connecting living things, it was predicated upon the idea that any two snails that had copulated remained linked across…
-
They sold the horse bust for $62.95

In 2009, a journalist by the name Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, bought 200 objects from eBay. These were cheap trinkets, the average price for each was no more than a few dollars. They then called 200 authors and asked them to write a story about one of the objects. They returned to eBay to…
-
Storytelling in Marketing

As much as sci-fi movies want us to believe data-rich holographic interfaces are how we’ll manage all our information in the future, that’s not the trajectory we’ve been following. To persuade someone, motivate a group, or inform a society we have always used narrative. Tribal myths, heroic legends, the humble parable: stories have always set…
-
Growing Tiny Businesses

These are a collection of different posts I’ve written over the last few years, pulled together from various unfinished blogs throughout my twenties and early thirties.
-
Concentrate your efforts
A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with an aspiring content creator. We’ll call him Mike. He’s been creating content for three years, but has struggled to build an audience. When I asked him about his distribution strategy, he told me he’s re-purposing his content for all the major social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook,…