Sensory Snapshot - October 4, 2023
Your weekly dose of the things I'm watching, reading, listening to, and thinking about, guaranteed to improve your life. This week: Dream AI, Barry Diller, Claude Debussy, Tim Ferriss, & Shane Parrish
Hello ladies and gentlemen, my lords and my ladies. We’re halfway through another week and it’s 80 degrees here in New England. Halt the pumpkin Shipyard’s for a moment, we’re still having some painkillers this Indian summer. (Can one use that term anymore? Unclear).
This Week’s Cool Thing: Dream AI - Dream AI is one of my new creative outlets. Using technology similar to Dall-e or Midjourney, Dream is an app which allows you to generate an image, based on a text prompt. What’s cool about Dream (aside from being free without the need for credits or a monthly fee) is it's the perfect training ground for determining the limits of AI (and stretching them). What I’ve learned from copious amounts of prompt engineering is the more specific you are the better.
What with the ability to add an image from your camera roll to act as a template and a platform replete with a “For You” page, the app is taking important steps toward the future of entertainment.
With the breathtaking and breakneck pace of AI innovation, it won’t be long before users can auto generate animated video from text prompts. And it won’t be long after that until the generation becomes multimodal, allowing for short videos and films to be scored, voiced, and animated, all by AI.
And you’ll be able to see the films and videos others make in your own personal “For You” page that will be governed by something akin to the TikTock algorithm. So how many years before we get custom videos you think? And how many years after that do we get custom video games? Let me know in the comments.
What I’m Listening to: Squawk Pod - Barry Diller on Hollywood Hegemony, Strikes, and Streaming. Speaking of the future of entertainment, Barry Diller has an excellent (albeit triggering to some) take on the future of the entertainment industry. This comes from the CNBC produced podcast Squawk Pod which is a winnowed down version of their flagship morning show, Squawk Box.
As someone who worked in the entertainment industry and saw the broken system up close, I personally think Diller’s take on the WGA strike is spot on.
For those of you who don’t know, Barry Diller’s story is the wet dream most books will recount when discussing legends of Hollywood and paragons of hard work. Starting in the mailroom at William Morris (before it was WME) he spent three years in the bowels of America’s most venerable agency, learning about the history of the entertainment industry by reading all the alphabetized files there. He then went on to rise through the ranks, becoming the head of television in the and eventually, the president of Paramount in the 70s. In the 80s he became CEO of Fox and now runs a conglomerate (InterActiveCorp) that owns Expedia, Ticketmaster, Match.com and Tinder. The extended introduction is to buttress how informed his opinion is, which is as follows:
There are massive, existential problems going on in the entertainment industry which most participants refuse to acknowledge. They existed before AI, but have now reached critical mass due to the disruptive technology.
Tech companies have already won the streaming war, traditional media companies should pivot, adapt, and compete in novel ways.
Netflix had a first mover advantage, has vertical integration and has an effective algorithm with global market penetration.
Amazon can afford to run their streaming service at a tremendous loss because it's considered a way to retain Amazon Prime members, which is a tremendous boon to revenue in other areas.
Apple has deep pockets for a variety of shows, talent, and option rights to material due to its revenue that has nothing to do with streaming.
Traditional media companies are trying to beat these tech companies at their own game rather than using their unique strategic advantages or creating new ones.
The writers and actors chose to strike “Ten minutes after the iceberg hit the Titanic.” They have been rearranging the deck chairs while the band plays for the past seven months.
The writers now have a “tortured paragraph” about AI protections in their new deal that does nothing for no one
It allows Writers to use AI tools, but restricts Studios from using AI tools.
Writers were already using AI tools.
The only recourse for Writers if a WGA signatory Studio started using AI tools would be litigation, boycott, or another labor strike, of which none of the members can afford anymore.
The agreed upon compensation is “A little better. It’s not profoundly better”
The residuals for backend streaming, a huge bone of contention, will now be based on “if 20% or more of a streaming service’s US subscriber’s watch a release within three months, they qualify for a 50% bonus of ‘backend compensation’ based on current backend fee structuring.
“You get an extra 50%,” says entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel.
That 50% bonus is calculated based on an existing residuals formula. Per the new agreement, for example, for a half-hour TV episode, a writer could receive a $9,031 bonus.
The Hollywood Reporter comments that this threshold is “not an easy threshold to reach, but it’s not impossible, either.”
Netflix has ~75 million US subscribers. 15 million subscribers would have to watch your show / movie within 3 months of release to qualify for backend compensation.
For the most part, compensation in general will still be contingent on how good of a deal you or your lawyer can negotiate for you, based on your “heat”.
This does nothing for rank and file Writers.
Diller comments that the Studios were amenable to these terms “within the first ten days” of the strike.
The questions we should really be asking ourselves, what with the UAW strike and the WGA-SAG strike is, in the face of existential disruptions to both these industries (in the form of non-union foreign and electric car plants and AI generated entertainment, coupled with the creator economy, respectively) are unions really the best way to negotiate positive change for their members anymore? Or do they generate more negative latent functions for their members than positive penny wise pound foolish gains? I don’t know, I’m asking.
What I’m Jamming To: Clare de Lune, Claude Debussy - Phew, I really went in on that last piece. It’s time to calm things down. And what better way than with classical music. Clare de Lune is my favorite piece of classical music of all time, and there is no comparison. The piece contains so much emotion, evoking feelings of nostalgia and longing for a place that can never be again. A place that perhaps never was to begin with. And yet, the notes speak of rising, and perhaps they are the rising itself. And as the song presses on, it takes on the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It speaks to the laughing astonishment that the ugliness and pain is essential to the elation and joy that heralds a new tomorrow. It’s the closest musical embodiment of the sentiment, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We all live in the best of all possible worlds. And yet, we must cultivate our own gardens.” And to Claude Debussy, I’m so incredibly grateful.
What I’m Reading: Tim Ferriss, Shane Parrish, Amanda Goetz: It’s officially Q4 and I’ve joined the droves of entrepreneurs, influencers and angels all preparing their goals for the next few months. And to help me, I’m using frameworks from the three wonderful people listed in the byline.
Tim Ferriss has a Fear Setting exercise he does every quarter to help guide pivots, new ventures and decision making.
First you define your nightmare scenario. If the venture you are planning goes awry, quantify how bad your situation would be, and how you would remedy that situation
Next, define what you are putting off due to fear and what it is costing you by postponing action?
And finally, are you waiting for something?
Farnam Street’s Personal Annual Report
Shane Parrish has us act as a new interim CEO taking over our own lives with this framework
And the most important questions are:
What would you stop doing if you took over your life right now?
What would you start doing?
What do you want to spend more time doing this quarter?
What do you want to spend less time doing this quarter?
Where am I waiting for someone else to make the first move?
Can I go first and go positive?
What can I do this week to make the rest of the year easier?
Who do I spend time with which brings me down? Up?
Amanda Goetz’s Newsletter, OKR’s
And finally, actually setting your OKR’s to achieve those lofty goals you decided to set for yourself.
This framework was featured in Amanda Goetz’s newsletter last week.
O = "Objectives" - your goals
KR = "Key Results" - how you will get there, and how you will know you have
Set at least three objectives and then at least three tangible, actionable ways to get there.
Choose five value pillars for the quarter and put two on the front burner and three on the back burner
What I’m Thinking About: And last but not least, what I’m chewing on this week. When we started this whole digital revolution, we began with command prompts. Then we moved to a Graphic User Interface (GUI). And now it seems like we’re moving back to command prompts (this time with AI and plain language). And while we may have some sort of GUI, either with a heads up display or glasses we wear, or an earpiece we listen and speak into, text and verbal commands will be the predominant way we interact with our AI agents to get them to carry out tasks for us.
The implications of the invention of language and text as a means of storing, sharing, and expressing continue to astound me. Everyone thinks of fire or the wheel, or even stone tools, but I’d argue text is the most formative tool ever developed by humans. I wonder what that Sumerian thought when he began recording how many bales of wheat the village had onto clay tablets 5,500 years ago. What do you think he was thinking of? What do you think drove him to invent writing? Let me know in the comments.
Amazing read… again!