In the long run magazines can't be a convenience play - the Web has stolen that. So magazines have to be high fidelity - a fantastic experience - to thrive. Magazines will survive the Internet age, but only the ones that give people an experience they just can't get anywhere else. A magazine will have to be truly loved to make it.
Kevin ManeyChunking is the ability of the brain to learn from data you take in, without having to go back and access or think about all that data every time. As a kid learning how to ride a bike, for instance, you have to think about everything you're doing. You're brain is taking in all that data, and constantly putting it together, seeing patterns, and chunking them together at a higher level. So eventually, when you get on a bike, your brain doesn't have to think about how to ride a bike anymore. You've chunked bike riding.
Kevin ManeyOur brains are great at knowing what to forget. We actually have to teach computers to do the same.
Kevin ManeyI'm that tech writer who gets on stage and plays funny tech songs. I wouldn't want that to be all I'm known for, but it's a bit of a differentiator.
Kevin ManeyArtificial intelligence uses a complex set of rules - algorithms - to get to a conclusion. A computer has to calculate its way through all those rules, and that takes a lot of processing. So AI works best when a small computer is using it on a small problem - your car's anti-lock brakes are based on AI. Or you need to use a giant computer on a big problem - like IBM using a room-size machine to compete against humans on Jeopardy in 2011.
Kevin ManeyI reluctantly signed up for a journalism major, thinking I needed a fall-back way to make money should my career as a novelist fail to take off. As I started to try on journalism, including doing internships and working at the campus paper, I found I actually liked it. So I started to want to be a journalist.
Kevin ManeyTalented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds ahead, or two hundredths of a second, or two days. Napoleon on an eighteenth century battlefield had something more like a two-day advantage. Wayne Gretzky in a hockey game was probably a second ahead of everyone else on the ice.
Kevin Maney