Jonathan Taplin on Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google & Amazon Undermined Democracy

Jonathan Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, and a former tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band, as well as a film producer for Martin Scorsese. If that is not enough to make him a worthy guest of Singularity.FM then let me add that Jonathan is a visionary entrepreneur who started the very first streaming VOD startup called Intertainer way back in 1996. Finally, Taplin is the author of a timely book titled Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornernerd Culture and Undermined Democracy. In my view Move Fast and Break Things is a must read and we all should not only discuss but also take political action on the issues described by Jonathan. [At least to the extent that we want to have a sustainable and working democracy.] During our 75 min conversation with Jonathan Taplin we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: becoming Bob Dylan’s music producer; becoming Martin Scorsese’s film producer; his biggest dream and biggest fear; the thesis is of his book Move Fast and Break Things; whether Google, Amazon, and Facebook are monopolies; culture and the quality of content on YouTube; amateur movies like Envoy and True Skin that were bought for the big screen; Facebook and democracy; copyright, piracy, privacy, DRM and SOPA… As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon. You can watch the full video interview here: https://www.singularityweblog.com/jonathan-taplin/